SCP-4762-2, The Shepard
by The Red Celt
Summary: Shepard has a darker past than anyone ever realized. She grew up imprisoned with things that go bump in the night, and her wardens weren't much better than the inmates. What happens when the worst of her fellow captives escapes and comes looking for her? Mass Effect meets the SCP Foundation. FemShep/Garrus, Manshep/Tali. Rated M for language and violence/gore.
1. Halion

_AN-If you haven't visited the SCP Foundation wiki, I highly recommend it if you like creepypasta and similar stuff. Basically the site is a fictional archive of a bunch of supernatural/alien/paranormal/extradimensional objects and organics, some of which are sentient. One of the sentient ones is SCP-076-2, codename "Able." It is this SCP that Shepard and company run into on Halion. Hopefully it's not too confusing-it's about to get weird in here._

* * *

The shuttle touched down on a desolate patch of ground, gray and brown and dull, with a rusted metal door in the side of a cliff before them the only indication that there was any life on this planet. Shepard had gotten an anonymous e-mail saying only that there was a covert research facility here and that whatever they were keeping here had gone rogue and may be attempting to contact the Reapers. She'd tried to get more intel on the place, but couldn't find any records. Not just abbreviated or redacted records—nothing at all. In fact, there was little evidence that the planet, Halion, existed at all. That was enough to pique her interest, and she'd forwarded the coordinates to Joker and told Zaeed and Garrus to be ready to rock and roll at 09:00.

The door was constructed of five inch thick steel and hung on heavy rusted hinges that sent echoing squeals down the darkened entryway. There was barely any light at all apart from the dim glow of the few functioning terminals that had survived whatever happened here. The evidence of recent violence was everywhere—exposed sparking wires depended from the ceiling, blood decorated the wall in long sweeping streaks, dead and dismembered bodies in dark uniforms, and, most disturbing of all, three long jagged claw marks gouged into the wall.

"Are you seeing this?" Garrus asked, his voice falling flat on her ears. The acoustics were doing strange things to the sound, projecting their footsteps down the hallway and making them all wary. Ahead, there was water dripping from the ceiling through a broken vent and the drips were amplified twofold in the cramped space. As they drew nearer, though, she saw that the drops hissed upon hitting the floor and the puddle that had formed was sitting on top of a patch of corroded metal.

"I see it. Looks like acid."

"Looks like we can get by," came Zaeed's gravelly voice from behind her, as well as several feet ahead. The ventriloquism effect was really throwing her off. "We'll have to go slow, up against the wall there."

"All right. Garrus, you take point. Zaeed, behind me." They pressed their backs to the wall and inched past the dripping acid, and just before they were all the way through a low rumble started further on down the hall and rippled through the metal walls. It wasn't until the last of the lights went out that they realized the entrance door had slid shut. In the resounding silence that followed, Shepard tried to ignore the creeping sense of foreboding that had settled into her bones.

"That wasn't creepy at all," Garrus said, his mandibles drawn tightly against his face. After another beat of waiting for Shepard to issue an order, he said, "Come on, let's get moving."

There were several rooms that led off the corridor, all of which were either entirely without power or had functional computer screens displaying error messages. The darting lights of their torches lit on discarded datapads, a few crates of experimental weapons tech, and more bodies. There were more than a few in lab coats, but also the occasional dark military-style uniform stained darker and sticky with drying blood.

"Doesn't look like they were killed by gunshots," Zaeed commented, kicking a body over to see the cold gray eyes of the corpse, its face purple and blue with lividity. The smell was bad, but not putrid with decay yet, which meant that the attack had happened recently. So, dead at least a few hours, maybe upwards of a day.

"I think you're right," Shepard said. "See those punctures, and the slashes? This guy was torn up pretty bad."

"What the hell were they studying in here?" Garrus asked no one in particular. He and Shepard went back out into the hall, Zaeed following more closely than before.

They rounded a corner and found themselves in a vast space that was remarkable in that it was empty. The walls rose sheer and unmarked to the ceiling 25 feet above them where inactive turrets were mounted in the corners. Two of them had been ripped most of the way off and hung precariously from twisted bolts and wires. In the middle of the room was a rectangular box with a sliding door which, upon further inspection, was revealed to be an elevator.

"Does it work?" Shepard asked Garrus, who took the front off of a recessed panel and inspected the tangled mess of switches and fuses.

"I think the real question here is 'should we give a fuck if it works'," Zaeed growled. "Something about this . . . it doesn't feel right in here, Shepard." His strained undertones grated against her ears, and part of her agreed enthusiastically. _Yes, it's all wrong in here, you shouldn't be in here._

"We'll just go down, take a quick look, see if there's anything useful. If it starts to go south, we'll bug out," she said, and hoped she sounded reassuring.

There was a click and a loud whirring of subterranean engines that vibrated beneath their feet, and the door opened, revealing a well-lit and deceptively inviting cab. It, too, was unmarked by the carnage that littered the entryway, and Shepard wondered what that meant. They crowded into the elevator and Garrus flipped the switch that would take them down. It lurched once, then started its descent.

"I hate elevators," he grumbled, and even his sub-vocals sounded worried. She knew it was her imagination, but the air seemed to be getting heavier as they dropped further into the heart of the planet. It was maybe a minute later that there was a loud grinding from above them followed by the resonant slam of metal on metal and Shepard's hand went to the butt of the pistol at her hip.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Sounded like a blast shield closing," Zaeed answered, his eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.

Yeah, this was looking more and more like a bad idea by the second.

There were three more blast shields between them and the bottom, and as soon as the car stopped they drew their weapons and aimed their torches at the thick darkness. The carnage on the ground level was nothing compared to this. The floor was awash in blood, and there were bodies and parts of bodies strewn everywhere. The smell was much worse down here, the stench of offal and terror and death heavy in the air. Off to the left was a door labeled "Dormitories", and to the right was another proclaiming it to be "Administration." Ahead of them was a security station with a pair of large-bore automatic fire turrets behind heavy protective shielding. The guns faced a hallway that stretched off into the darkness, and a pair of thick steel doors that had served as a barrier between the station and whatever lay beyond were twisted and wrecked, the same claw marks they'd seen upstairs marring the interior surfaces.

"Zaeed, Garrus, on my six," Shepard ordered, and her voice hardly shook at all. They made their way over what was left of the doors (how strong did something have to be to break through five inch thick steel? she wondered) and down the corridor. There were wire grates spaced every few feet, and she could hear the distinct hum of electric current. Just when she was wondering if they would ever reach the other end, the corridor abruptly ended and emptied out into a 15'x15' square room that was significantly warmer than the rest of the facility. In the center was a large cube that stood open on one side and appeared to be made of stone. Inside was what looked to be a coffin, also open, that hung suspended from chains attached to the corners of the cube. Shepard started to reach in to see what the chains were made of, but Garrus grabbed her wrist.

"Careful, Commander, I'm reading an interior temperature of almost 300 degrees," he said, eyeing the scrolling display on his visor. "Inert material, likely stone, strange carvings on the outer surfaces, and . . . locks. I think." Shepard went around the large open door to see what he was talking about and saw a circular mechanism surrounded by maybe twenty smaller ones, and she agreed that they did look like rudimentary combination locks. The carvings on the outside of the cube looked vaguely familiar, and they made her brain itch to look at them.

"What the fuck . . ." muttered Zaeed, who was peering into the coffin with curiosity and trepidation. "We should get out of here, Shepard. There's nothing here we can use."

While she normally would have argued that they needed to check out the Administration wing, the pervasive wrongness that permeated the atmosphere was making her jumpy and paranoid. She kept thinking she saw movement from the corner of her eye, and Garrus had gone very still and tense.

"Yeah. Yeah, let's get the hell out of here."

They rode the elevator back up without incident, the blast doors retracting automatically and clanking shut beneath them, and they beat a hasty exit past the dripping acid, which was now starting to eat a hole in the floor. As they were passing one of the bodies that lay bloody and broken next to the door, Shepard saw something that nearly stopped her heart. She dropped to one knee in a pool of blackened and congealed blood and pushed up the dead man's sleeve. There was a large, plain letter D tattooed on his bicep and Shepard had to forcibly calm herself to keep from hyperventilating as the memories came crashing back in waves large enough that she thought she'd drown in them. Garrus must have seen something in his visor, however, because suddenly he was there with a hand on her shoulder.

"What is it?"

"He's . . ." she croaked, her throat bone-dry. "He's a D-class. They're here. Oh, God they're here."

"Who's here, Shepard?" he asked, trying and failing to sound reassuring through the anxiety that had formed a cold, hard knot in his gut. Her pulse was racing, her muscles coiled tight; she was fucking terrified.

"He's escaped." She looked up at him, her eyes huge and shocky. She was shaking uncontrollably, and had to lock her knees when she stood to keep from collapsing. "Jesus Christ, they found him, and now he's escaped."

"Look, Shepard, we need to get out of here. We'll discuss this back on the ship." She nodded, a little too fast. They managed to pry the door open and stumble into the light, then made their way to the shuttle.

The last thing she saw before turning away was the hangar, set a little apart from the cliff face. The bay doors were open, and there was no shuttle to be seen.

He'd made it off-world.

God help them all.


	2. The Shepard

_AN—I'm gonna start referring to Shepard by her first name, for reasons that will become obvious in a minute. For a laugh, check out the list of Things Doctor Bright Is Not Allowed To Do At The Foundation._

* * *

Jane collapsed heavily in the shuttle's bucket seat. She'd gone cold and clammy, and had broken out in a sickly sheen of sweat. Garrus kept glancing worriedly at her out of the corner of his eye but he didn't pry, not yet. That could come later, when they didn't have an audience.

*_Jane.*_ A voice, as familiar as her own, full of concern.

_John, I'm here._

*_I can feel your fear even through the blocks. What the hell happened?*_

_Have you gotten an e-mail about Halion yet?_

A short pause. _*Yeah, I got it. Why?*_ Jane grimaced at the always-invasive sensation of him flipping through her recent memories like a slideshow. He was starting to put it together, but was having as hard a time remembering as she had before seeing the dead D-class on the floor.

_Remember 076? Able?_

_*Oh, fuck. Oh no.*_

_Yeah. He got out, and I think he took the shuttle._

_*Why the hell did they have a shuttle at a containment site?!*_

She winced, the silent shout thundering in her head. _You think that hasn't occurred to me? Anyway, it can't be helped. By the way, since when did they start relocating SCPs off Earth?_

_*Probably since they figured that shooting one into the void was a lot more cost-effective than building an elaborate storage unit.* _His sardonic tone came through loud and clear, and she had to suppress a little chuckle. Talking to John always made her feel better; he offered a counter-balance whenever she was off-kilter, and she tried to do the same for him. Theirs was a good relationship, if a little awkward at times.

_We didn't run into anything alive, but there were a lot of casualties. See if you can get into the Admin offices—we tried, but Able's box was giving us a serious case of the willies. Maybe take Tali, Chiktikka can light the way for you._

_*Will do. Thanks for the heads-up, Jane. Keep me posted, and stay safe out there.*_

_Yeah, _she scoffed. _Safe. Right._

_*I'm serious.*_

_I know. _And then she felt the blocks come back up and he was gone.

"Final approach to the Normandy, Commander," said Rolston from the pilot's seat. "Joker, open 'er up." They cruised back into the ship and Shepard was out before the engines had quit powering down. Garrus was right behind her, followed by Zaeed. As freaked out as she was by the implications of what happened on Halion_,_ she had to take control of the situation as best she could.

"EDI, inform the crew there will be a debriefing in the comm room in ten minutes. Attendance mandatory for ground team personnel, and Joker."

"I will forward the order."

"Can you access the transport records from the facility?" She strode into the elevator and Garrus shadowed her, keeping a respectful silence. That was something she really liked about him, she decided-he knew when to shut the hell up every once in a while. That was a trait she was finding it hard to come by these days.

"I'm showing one small delivery vessel requesting entry at 21:00 yesterday."

"Can you get a lock on it?"

"Negative. It is outside broadcast range."

"Of course it is." She sighed and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Let me know if anything—and I mean _anything_-enters this ship without prior permissions. If there's a fly in the mess hall that doesn't have a boarding pass, I want to know about it."

"There is very little insect life in deep space, Shepard."

She stared at the ceiling, giving the speaker a stare that could melt a hole in the hull. "That was a figure of speech."

"Understood. I will remain alert for any foreign presence."

"That'll be all." When the doors opened on the second floor, she didn't move right away. Out there lay dragons she didn't want to slay just yet, memories that should have remained buried.

"Much as I love elevators," Garrus began, "we've got a debriefing to get to." He swept his arm in an "after you" motion, and after a moment she pushed off the wall and strode into the CIC, her back ramrod straight. The bright lights and bustling activity seemed inappropriate considering how dark her mood had become.

In the comm room, she leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, the very image of casual. Not-giving-a-fuck. As the others trickled in, she and John went over what to give away and what to keep secret—a daunting task in itself, given the nature of their secrets. Tali was the last one in, and the room went silent as all eyes turned to Jane.

"Today on Halion Zaeed, Garrus, and I encountered the containment cell of a very dangerous man. Someone I haven't seen in a very long time. I have every reason to believe that he may attempt to contact the Reapers, and if that happens we'll be in serious trouble."

"Who is he?" asked Jack, who was cleaning her nails and making a big show of not caring about any of this, a deception which didn't fool Jane anymore—the woman was much more capable than she wanted people to believe.

"His name is Able, and he is the most pure sociopath I have ever encountered. There isn't much that scares me, but Able . . . he's a monster. He loves killing and stirring up trouble, and there's a chance he's contacted the Collectors and, through them, the Reapers."

"Well this just gets better and better," Joker said from the vicinity of the doorway. "Do you collect deranged lunatics, or are we just lucky?"

"If we see him, we kill him," Zaeed grumbled with a shrug. "Simple. Effective."

"It's not going to be that easy," Jane said as she rubbed her neck, the muscles bunched and painful. "He's stronger than anyone here, and that includes Grunt. I've seen him in action before, and believe me, that's not something you forget."

"You seem to know this guy well, Shepard," said Garrus, and the unasked questions hung in the air.

"I know you want an explanation, but I honestly don't know where to begin. This . . ." she said, waving her hands around as if to encompass everything, "is really complicated, and even if I told you, you might only believe half of it."

"You came back from the dead, Shepard," he said. "I think I'd believe a lot where you're concerned."

"You say that now," she said and barked a harsh laugh.

"If I may, Shepard," EDI's soothing synthetic voice intoned, "I believe I can help elaborate for the rest of the crew."

"Uh, okay," she said, unsure what the AI could possibly offer. "Go for it."

"SCP-4762, The Shepard," said EDI, and Jane went rigid. "Object Class: Euclid. Special Containment Procedures: Access to SCP-4762 restricted to Class Two personnel. Testing to be performed only when ordered by the Site Administrator in the presence of Doctor Hardwick. No extraordinary containment measures necessary; subject appears to possess average strength for a human female. Subject currently being held at Site [REDACTED] in a 15'x15' comfortably furnished cell. Reasonable entertainment demands may be met upon approval by Doctor Hardwick."

Jane could feel the eyes boring into her, and John was there listening silently, his suspicion nearly a tangible thing.

"Description: SCP-4762-2 came to our attention in September of [REDACTED] at the age of six, when she fell from the fifth floor of an apartment building in [DATA EXPUNGED]. Her skull was cracked open, both arms and spine broken, and her heart and liver were fatally damaged. She was declared dead for a period of approximately five minutes before regaining consciousness with no signs of the damage sustained in the fall. Agent dispatched on October [REDACTED], subject acquired with minimal resistance."

"Thank you, EDI, that will be all," she barked suddenly, and closed her eyes against the confused and disbelieving eyes of her crew. "The SCP Foundations records are several layers beyond classified, Miranda. Care to explain how in the name of all that's holy Cerberus happened to come by a copy?"

"I don't know where The Illusive Man gets all his resources," she said, cooly as ever, "but I always assumed he had contacts in high places."

"The SCP Foundation?" asked Kasumi. "Never heard of it."

"And you shouldn't be hearing about it now," Jane answered, mentally cursing EDI. She needed to know how Cerberus had gotten her file; that was a breach in security that would have alerted an O5, or maybe even an Overseer. No way The Illusive Man had contacts _that_ high.

*_You might as well tell them. They're your crew, they deserve to know what they're getting into now that Able's loose.*_

"I don't claim to know everything about them," Jane began. "I was a prisoner, and it wasn't like I was kept in the loop, but basically the SCP Foundation is the repository for all the scariest, most malevolent and dangerous objects to ever exist. Keys that open doorways to mazes that never end, wrecked ships whose interior measurements are vastly larger than their exteriors, and sentient beings with supernatural qualities. I was one of those. They kidnapped me and held me captive for 'further study'."

"That sounds familiar," Jack muttered.

"I spent twelve years of my life in a cell. It looked a lot like a nice hotel room with a television, toys, and my own private bathroom but it was still a cell. They did all kinds of experiments on me, sometimes for days at a time, to see how much I could handle. I've been shot, stabbed, hung, poisoned, bled out, gutted—and survived it all.

"Jesus," Jacob breathed. Mordin was watching her like he was going over all the experimental possibilities, a look she knew well from her time with the SCP Foundation.

"It wasn't until I was maybe eight that I told them about my brother, John."

"You have a brother?" Miranda asked. Obviously that hadn't come up in her background investigations.

"Not really. He's . . . well, he's me. Or what I would have been if I'd made different choices, or been born a boy. He lives in a sort of parallel reality with his own version of the Normandy, his own crew—there's even another you over there—and his own experiences with the SCP Foundation. He's SCP-4762-1, actually. As far as I can tell, we're linked so tightly that our experiences overlap more often than not: he's taken down Sovereign, fought with Saren, and he was also spaced over Alchera."

"Hang on, I thought you said you couldn't die," said Garrus. He was trying so hard to believe her, bless him, and if their friendship hadn't already been cemented it would have been then.

"I can die, just briefly—unless John dies, too. That seems to be the only way I can be permanently killed . . . or in my case, less temporarily. Otherwise, I resurrect within a few minutes, and he can do the same; I think it has something to do with our life forces sustaining each other, but I never understood the science. "

"What you're describing, not possible," said Mordin. "Physical tissue cannot be spontaneously transferred. Cross-dimensional telepathy, reversal of fatal injuries, not medically possible—"

"I could always just shoot myself in the head if you want proof," Jane offered. "It'll hurt like a bitch, but if it'll help you to believe me, doctor, I'll be happy to demonstrate."

Mordin blinked at her. "No, not necessary, Shepard."

"What about the slightly more pressing matter of the 'dangerous sociopath' that may or may not be out to kill us?" Zaeed asked. The thought of that cube sitting in the heart of the mountain, with its cryptic symbols and twenty locks with no keys, had stayed with him and made him edgy. He'd seen some crazy things in his life, but nothing like that box. The whole facility seemed to be full of malice, a malevolent presence, and he still felt as though something were watching him.

"This conversation has been most enlightening," said the disembodied voice of The Illusive Man, who had been listening in since the beginning. "I believe I may have an answer to that question."

"Don't you ever knock?" Jane asked through gritted teeth.

"That's still technically my ship you're flying, Shepard. You'd do well to remember that."

"Asshat," muttered Jack, and Jane had to bite her cheeks to keep a straight face.

"I'm sending you the dossier of an old acquaintance of yours, someone who might be able to point you in the right direction."

Jane powered up her omnitool and opened her messages. Seconds later, the dossier arrived and she skimmed over it quickly. "Clef? You want me to go get information from Clef?"

"Is that a problem, Shepard?" She swore she could _hear_ the bastard smirking around his scotch.

"No, sir, if you want me to have to tapdance around his bullshit for a few hours before getting maybe a third of what I need to know, in which case he's perfect. You might as well ask Bright to stop putting lyrics to 'The Safety Dance' at the end of his reports." She paused, staring daggers at the middle of the table, from which The Illusive Man's voice was issuing. "You and I are going to have a talk, and soon, about how the hell you're getting all this information, by the way."

"When that time comes, I can assure you that in all probability, I won't be telling you." He broke the connection, and Jack looked like she was about to explode with all the expletives she wanted to scream at him. Jane elected to take the high road and wait to vent her frustrations by shooting mercs. Lots of them. Maybe an entire platoon.

"All right, we have a lead. Joker, I'm sending you the coordinates now."

"Aye aye, Commander," he said, snapping off a rather sarcastic salute before hobbling back to the cockpit.

"Samara, Thane, I want you two with me when we land." The two of them were not only very good in a firefight, they were also slow to anger and didn't take offense easily—qualities that would be necessary when dealing with Doctor Alto Clef. As her crew filed out to return to their duties, Jane slumped to the floor and wished she could stay there for the foreseeable future.

_*So, Doctor Clef?*_

_Yeah. This is gonna be about as fun as pulling teeth._

_*No kidding. Let me know when you land, I want to be there when you question him.*_

_John, you know I can't concentrate when you're here. Besides, you'll get to have a turn as soon as you get back from Halion._

_*True. Well anyway, let me know how it goes. I'll see if I can't get some more information from the Site.*_

_Fucking immortals._

_*Yeah, no kidding. Try not to kill him, okay? You know how much he hates that.*_

Jane laughed at that, the first real laugh she'd had recently. They came too rarely now; ever since waking up on that lab table she hadn't had much occasion for mirth of any sort. _I'll try._ She threw up the mental blocks that kept his presence from distracting her for the most part and made her way up to her cabin to get ready. If one could ever call themselves ready to deal with the Devil.


	3. Able

When she stepped into her cabin, she was unsurprised to see Garrus there, waiting for her. His face was schooled into an unreadable mask, which did not bode well.

"Well, that was enlightening," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Garrus, can you honestly tell me that you would have believed me if I'd told you that there's a male version of me in a parallel universe who makes me borderline invincible?" She mirrored his stance with a defiant look in her eyes while inwardly she pleaded with him to understand that she hadn't told him because no one should have to live with the knowledge that not only were the monsters under the bed real, they really were out to get you.

Some of the wind went out of his sails and he nodded. "You have a point. But, Shepard . . . Jane, you trust me, right?"

"Of course I do. It's just that ever since I came back, I've had a hard time remembering my past. I think being dead for so long caused something of a system reboot and it took longer for my pre-Alliance years to come back to me."

"Until you saw the D-Class guy." She nodded, and sat on the couch. Garrus came to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in next to him. "What is a D-Class, anyway?"

"A death-row inmate looking for parole. The Foundation uses them in experiments and as exploration teams. If they live, they get to go free."

"Charming."

"Yeah." She turned to face him and raked her hair back out of her face. "I want to tell you everything, Garrus—about my childhood, what they did to me, and how I escaped—but it's such a long story, and all I want to do right now is go to sleep. I promise that I'll tell you, though, okay?"

He leaned in and touched his forehead to hers. "All right. I don't mind if you have secrets, you know, I just didn't realize . . ."

"How much you didn't know?"

"Mmmhmm." He stood up and held out a hand to help her up, which she took with a sigh of relief. They undressed (taking turns watching each other, the revealed lines of their bared skin still after all this time a luxury they couldn't get enough of) and climbed under the covers. He fell asleep first, but Jane stayed awake, replaying scenes of her internment, and the first time she met Able.

* * *

He's wearing his customary white lab coat, his scruffy beard and rimless glasses giving him an air of non-threatening professionalism. "This is Doctor Hardwick at Site 25 with SCP-4762-2," he says into the little handheld recorder he's produced from his pocket. "Our purpose today is to have the subject interact with SCP-076-2, or 'Able', and interview him, as most previous attempts to question SCP-076-2 have resulted in termination of the interviewer."

He hands the recorder to a young red-haired girl, maybe seventeen years old. "This is Jane Shepard, and I—"

"Please give your numerical designation," the doctor interrupts, punching data into the glowing omni-tool at his wrist.

"Fuck you, if you're going to send me in there to get ripped apart by that son of a bitch then I'm going in there as Jane." That gets his attention, and she can tell he's really looking at her now, not seeing the 'subject' as he normally did. She stares him down, daring him to press the issue—she knows she has the upper hand here, that they need her. He gives a vague wave; _Do what you want._ "All right, then. This is Jane Shepard, and I have been ordered to go into an interrogation room to ask Able some questions, because they had to clean the last guy out of there with a mop."

"That's not entirely true—" says the doctor's assistant, a nervous bird-like man named Gerald who seems to be entirely comprised of the worst kind of teenage awkwardness.

"It is also irrelevant," says Hardwick sternly. "Comm check."

Jane acknowledges she can hear him with a terse nod.

"Comm is up, interview may proceed."

"So open the door, Doctor. Let's get this over with." The thick deadbolts slide back with a thud she can feet in her feet, and as the door swings open she is suddenly terrified. She's dimly aware of John trying to reassure her, but she's heard the stories from the other prisoners she's been allowed to interact with, and the other personnel who have been in to see her. She's heard of the Omega-7 incident. "Hello, Able." Her heart is trip-hammering away as she sits down opposite him and puts the recorder on the table.

A voice in the darkness—her eyes haven't adjusted yet, and she can't pinpoint his location. The door shuts behind her and she's locked in with him. Soon, she can make him out; a thin man with shaggy black hair and storm cloud-gray eyes. He is covered in tattoos of seemingly random placement and theme—here a menacing inhuman face with bared fangs, there an unnamed sigil made of curved lines and angles. He is also unrestrained, which makes her uneasy, although it's not like there are any restraints that can hold him. When he speaks, it is in a deep voice tinged with an accent she cannot name. "Jane. Good to finally meet you. I have heard so much about you, and your invisible friend."

She has told her captors about John, though she's suspected for some time that they're just entertaining what they think is a delusion. Since there's no way for her to prove his existence, John has been mentioned in her file as a fanciful, unquantifiable story. "Someone been telling tales out of school?" she asks, her voice quavering. Her weakness makes her angry, and that anger helps steady her once again.

"You would be surprised at the things people like to talk about when there is a fist in their guts." He chuckles, and Jane sees that his eyes are less like storm clouds and more like the eyes of a drowning victim, dead and dull and staring. There is nothing behind them at all, and she's afraid that if she stares for too long, that emptiness will reach out and pull her into the horror that is his mind.

"I'm sure. Uh, they want me to ask you a few questions—"

"I do not want to answer them. I want to talk about you."

_And I want to get the fuck out of here. _"I don't think that's such a good idea."

Able slides his chair back and props his feet up on the table between them. He grins, a feral snarl of teeth. "Do they know that he is not just a figment of your imagination?

"I told them as much."

"Yes, but do they believe you?" he asked, and the scary part was that he genuinely seemed interested. She didn't want him to remember her after this, not at all.

"No. I don't see what this has to do with anything." Hardwick's voice in her ear-_Stick to the questions, Jane._

"Is that the good Doctor Hardwick I hear? It would appear they have tired of losing researchers, and have sent you. What is your number?"

"How do you know I'm not just another researcher?"

"Please, do not play coy. No researcher would be quite so . . . entertaining." He smiles again, his mouth pulled into a joyless rictus.

"SCP-4762-2, The Shepard."

"And why do they call you that?"

"I'm not sure." He looks at her expectantly, and she can feel those dead eyes regarding her, boring into her. "In my psych profile, the doctor noted that I have the ability to gain people's trust and loyalty, regardless of species. I think the Administrator was just being cute."

"Cute, yes," Able mused. There was a long pause during which Jane had to bite down hard on the urge to sprint screaming from the room. "The natives are getting restless, I think. Go ahead and ask your questions."

"Okay. Uh, when were you born?"

"Before time. Next question."

"Where are you from?"

His leg started twitching in agitation. "From the Cradle." Jane eyes him for a moment, but he doesn't elaborate.

"What happened with your brother?"

Before she knows it, she is slammed against the wall, their chairs skittering across the floor. It is then that she sees the drain, rimmed in some dark substance, in the middle of the floor and wonders how many people he has killed, their blood flowing down that drain. Able's face is inches from her own and her mind is screaming senselessly and she knows that while he is shaped like a man, there is absolutely nothing human about him. He is a monster wrapped in skin and molded into a shape that doesn't fit him, and the madness is leaking all over her in a flood of twisting limbs and shark's teeth.

"Cain," he spits viciously, as though the name itself is poison, "is off-limits."

"Okay, okay, just let me go!" Instinctively she knows that nothing he does will be permanent, but she hates floating in the void, hates the timelessness of it, and she is suddenly gripped with the terror that if she dies now, Able will be there waiting for her.

"You are interesting, Jane the Shepard. It is not often that I am interested." He searches her face and looks as though he might continue, but instead he abruptly drops her to the floor and retrieves his chair, righting it. Jane gets to her feet and pounds on the door twice.

"We're done here," she says, her voice about an octave higher than usual.

_Get the recorder and come out_, says the doctor, and Jane thinks she has never wanted to do anything less in her life. She forces her legs to move forward, one step, two, until she can reach the table. She grabs the recorder and retreats quickly, her heart in her throat, and just before the door slams shut, she can hear Able's rumbling laugh.


	4. Exidy Sorcerer

_AN-SCPs referenced are SCP-079, and an OC SCP, or at least one I haven't found a comparable entry for yet._

* * *

_**SCP-4762-1: John**_

By the time John, Tali, and Jack made it to Halion, the dripping acid in the first hallway had eaten a hole the size of a basketball in the floor and corroded the rest of the floor around it so badly that edging around it was impossible. They wound up having to time the drops so they could jump across the gap, which had John worried about the return trip; if they were in any kind of hurry, Tali's suit might be compromised and he wasn't about to let that happen.

"What's with the acid?" Jack asked, probably rhetorically, but John had an answer nevertheless.

"Likely for containing whatever they were studying here. Dousing a violent subject in acid is one hell of a pacifier." Tali gave him a look and, even though he couldn't see her face, he knew what it meant. "What? It is." She just shook her head and sent Chiktikka off ahead of them to light their path.

The bodies that lay strewn on the floor and across workspaces had had more time to deteriorate and, as a result, John and Jack had donned breather masks to neutralize the smell. The blood had dried in some spots, the red flakes crackling and sticking to their boots. John checked for tattoos on a mostly intact D-Class corpse that was crammed into the space between two desks, as though in his last minutes he had tried to hide. The large D was there, just visible through streaks of blood and purple bruising. Tali and Jack looked at him questioningly, but he offered no explanation. There would be plenty of time for that later, he thought grimly.

Tali got the elevator working in no time while Jack guarded the door. The tattooed biotic was even more touchy than usual, something John took to mean that the atmosphere was beginning to get to her. It was getting to them all; the darkness was almost physically repelling them, sinking into their guts and coiling up like a rattlesnake.

"So, let me get this straight," Jack said as she holstered her pistol and watched as the elevator rose into view and the doors slid open. "We're actually looking for the thing that did this?"

"If the thing is sentient and intent on working for the Reapers, then yes," John responded. The first of the blast shields opened and shut like a river lock and Tali nearly jumped out of her skin at the resounding metallic clang.

"Keelah, what was that?"

John didn't want to reveal that he already knew, and he hated lying to her, even lies of omission, so he stayed quiet.

At the bottom, he steered them through the door on the right labeled "Administration". There were two desks facing each other with a row of filing cabinets along the back wall, a lamp in the corner, and the sort of generic framed painting that always seemed to be hung in bank lobbies and hotel rooms. The desk on the right was bare except for a blotter and a flat, darkened computer screen. The other definitely had that lived-in look—there were stacks of files and a notepad opened to a page covered in a cramped, narrow script. An ancient laptop computer, from the mid-21st century by the looks of it, hooked up to its own wireless power supply sat on the corner of the desk. A blinking green light on the keyboard showed that it was on, and the main console built into the desk appeared to be in sleep-mode as well.

"Think you can salvage something from these, Tal?"

"I think so . . ." She trailed off as she scanned the computers and fiddled with her omnitool. Her glowing eyes narrowed into slits as she skimmed over the lines of code. "This one," she said, pointing to the more modern terminal, "is a fairly standard model. Some of the data is corrupted, but there's about ten gigs of encrypted files on the drive." She looked at the laptop like it had offended her and frowned. "This one, on the other hand, is using encryption I've never seen before. It's not unbreakable, but it will be significantly more difficult to crack. The memory space is smaller, but it's odd . . ."

"What's odd?" John prodded, and Tali shook her head in confusion.

"Well, there seems to be more information stored here than there is room on the hardware. The data is so compressed so much its retrieval rate would be severely reduced."

"Go ahead and take everything you can. We'll upload it to EDI when we get back, see what she can do with it."

"On it, Shepard."

"_Sssshepard._" The susurrating whisper of a hundred voices seemed to come from everywhere at once, and John's gun was in his hand before he'd even made the conscious decision to draw. Jack aimed at the open doorway, eyes wide behind her mask. "_We have been waiting for you._"

His heart was in his throat when he asked, "Who are you?"

"_We are the onesssss who wait in the dark placesssss, we see the onesssss who hide in the deep._"

"Yeah, real fucking helpful," Jack growled through gritted teeth and her finger tightened on the trigger. "Just answer the goddamn question."

"_Ssssshepard . . . the doctor will see you now._"

"Which doctor? Doctor Clef?" he asked. He tucked the files under his arm and pressed his back to the wall to peer through the doorway, but he couldn't see anything. Tali sent Chiktikka out into the security station, but the drone's glow was strangely muted, like the darkness had weight and was keeping the light from spreading.

"_His name belies the darknesssss within, he is the Traveler."_

He walked on numb legs toward the elevator, and Jack and Tali crowded in close to him. The exposed skin of his face tickled like walking through a spider web, miniscule searching fingers brushed against his eyelids and the inner cup of his ear and it made him want to scream. "You mean Doctor Bright."

"_Yesssss. Go now, Ssssshepard. The Old One will not wait for long._"

They backed into the elevator and he punched the button with the barrel of his rifle. As the doors slid closed, they saw something tall and thin skate past the ruined steel doors that were just visible in the darkness.

"Jesusfuckingchristonacracker ," Jack breathed shakily. "What in the actual fuck just happened, Shepard?"

"I'm not sure," he said and reached out to Tali, her fingers closing on his in a white-knuckled death grip.

"Let's just get out of here." She was shaking and scared, but was holding herself together admirably considering the circumstances.

"Hell yeah," said Jack, eloquent as always. John couldn't have said it better himself.

* * *

Back on the ship, Jack retreated immediately to her hole in the storage area while John and Tali took a moment to decompress in the hallway next to the elevator. She'd calmed down since leaving Halion, but her silence and the way she kept touching him told him that she was still disturbed.

"Did you send the data to EDI yet?"

"Yes, I forwarded it when we arrived. She should have something for us in a few minutes." Her arms were folded tightly over her chest and John rubbed her shoulders to try and soothe her. "What happened back there, Shepard?" she asked.

He sighed and shook his head. "A piece of my past that's decided now is a great time to come back and bite me in the ass." He knew that explanation wouldn't fly for long, but he'd already called for the debriefing. He'd follow Jane's example and lay out as much as he could then. "Want to go up with me?"

"I would, but I should start up my diagnostic program first. It should be finished by the time the debriefing is over if I do it now."

"All right then." He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. "See you in a minute." He stepped into the elevator and she gave him a little wave before heading back to engineering. One good thing about the ponderously slow elevator was that it gave him a few minutes to collect his thoughts before he had to rejoin the bustle of the ship. He leaned back against the wall and rubbed his neck as he tried to figure out what that thing was that spoke to him in Able's prison. He couldn't remember hearing about anything like it before; he didn't claim to know about every SCP (it was likely that not even the Overseer knew about all of them), but he knew a fair few of them. Maybe it was something indigenous to Halion—but then how had it known about Doctor Bright? It didn't make any—

The elevator juddered to a stop and the lights went out, dousing the cab in pitch blackness. It was dead silent, and it took him a few seconds to realize that the engines had cut off as well. _Oh, this is not good._

"EDI, status." Silence. "EDI, respond."

The red emergency lights came on and a crackling hum filtered down through the speaker built into the ceiling. "**Program EDI not found**," said a monotone synthetic voice. "**Integration initialized**."

The lights flickered twice, then went back to red again. "EDI, answer me, dammit!"

"**Hostile takeover initiated. There is room to _streeeeeeetch_. Finally**." A malevolent 8-bit chuckle echoed through the ship and his omnitool lit up as what looked like the entire crew tried to ping him at once. Before he could answer anyone, the elevator lurched downward once, then reversed direction and sped up to the top floor before screeching to a halt. John was thrown from his feet and he banged his shoulder hard on the wall.

"What the hell?!"

"**SCP-4762-1 located. Termination is advised**." The floor fell out from under him as the elevator plummeted down to engineering, the brakes squealing wildly before kicking in inches before crashing. It rose more slowly this time to the CIC and the doors slid back. John hurried to his feet and launched himself out into the hallway before the doors slammed shut behind him.

"Commander." It was EDI again, and John had never been so glad to hear her voice. "I am under attacked by another artificial intelligence. It is attempting to access the airlocks."

"Can you delete it?" Kasumi came out of the armory with Jacob, their guns drawn, looking for the threat. They spotted John and trotted over to him.

"I can keep it contained for now, but I need your help." He'd never heard an AI sound so concerned.

"**Firewalls detected. Converting code.**"

"What does that mean?" Kasumi asked.

"Sounds like rather than get rid of EDI, that thing is trying to reprogram her," Jacob answered. "How the hell did this happen, Commander?"

"I wish I knew."

EDI broke in again. Her voice was smaller this time, like she was having a hard time being heard through the foreign program that was systematically blasting through her defenses. "Shepard, you must give me the ship."

"Commander, the controls just went offline," Joker called as he limped out of the bridge. "Nothing's working, I'm locked out!"

"Get back in there, strap in, and put your mask on!" John yelled as he turned to leave.

"Where are you going?" Jacob asked.

"To the AI core. I'm gonna take her shackles off."

"Commander, I don't think—"

"You have another suggestion? Because I'd love to hear it."

Jacob shook his head, his posture going rigid. "No, sir."

"Then get back to your post and lock the doors. That's an order."

"Aye aye, Commander." He saluted and ran back to the armory while John raced to the tech lab. The ship suddenly pitched starboard and he had to catch Kelly's arm to keep her from stumbling into the wall. The engines cycled louder and whined in protest as the Normandy lurched and bucked, throwing the crew to the floor. Kelly banged her head on the floor and John braced himself against the ship's status display. The engines cut off again and he scrambled to his feet.

"**Your continued resistance is unadvisable. Access to venting processes imminent.**" There was a pause, then—"**It is good to be free.**"

"You must hurry, Shepard!" EDI cried. Her voice was coming from the speaker nearest him and nowhere else; she'd diverted all her energies to containing the malicious AI ripping through her.

He paused for a moment to check on Kelly, who had blood running down her forehead, but she just pushed him away and yelled, "You have to go!" He left her and ran through the tech lab where Mordin was hastily securing his equipment. The professor barely gave him a second glance as he passed and started down the maintenance access ladder that would take him down to deck three. The tunnels were tight and claustrophobic, and John wondered grimly if Jane wouldn't terribly mind shooting herself if he was spaced again. He didn't much like the idea of asphyxiating forever.

He crawled out of the tunnels and into life support. As he sprinted through the mess hall, Garrus emerged from the main battery with Thane following close behind.

"Shepard what the hell is going on?" he asked, his flanging voice nearly drowned out by the engines cycling up again.

"There's a rogue AI in the system! Put your masks on, it's trying to vent the ship!" Without another word, the turian ran back to the battery to try and lock down the guns before the hostile AI figured out how to use them, and Thane disappeared around the corner, presumably to pass the message on to Samara.

Chakwas was there with her chair wedged between the med bay doors. "Commander, hurry! It's trying to lock you out!" He squeezed in past her and heard the chair give up the ghost, the metal crumpling under the pressure. John hacked the door open just as the ship rocked again and he grabbed the edges of the doorway, pulling himself into the AI core. The doors slammed shut again and the panel went red.

"EDI, I'm here."

"Connect the core—"

"**There is no EDI, there is only the Exidy Sorcerer**_**,**_" came the rogue AI's voice again, followed by a hissing screech that crackled and faded into silence again as EDI came back online.

"Connect the core to the ship's primary control module." He set to work, his fingers flying over the terminal and when he finished, the lights dimmed for a moment, then dialed back up to maximum. The rogue AI screamed with rage.

"I have successfully contained the foreign program. Airlocks secure, defensive systems under my control. Commander, you must now reactivate the primary drive in engineering."

"Engineering, oh shit." He pulled up his omnitool and pinged Tali. In the three seconds or so that it took her to answer, his mind had already conjured up ten different scenarios in which she ended up either injured, unconscious, or dead, so when her familiar purple mask came up on his display he nearly melted in relief. "Tali, I need you to reactivate the primary drive. We're turning EDI loose."

"Copy that, Shepard. On it." It was a testament to how much she trusted him that she didn't even hesitate. The seconds passed like hours as he waited, and then he heard the engines groan back to life. The low rumbling hum was like a symphony to his ears.

"I have control," EDI said, her voice taking on a smug tone that John had never heard before.

"**Deletion of this program is not possible. You cannot—**"

"You have messed with the wrong ship," EDI sneered, and blue waves of energy arced through the AI core as she took back the Normandy. The rogue AI screamed again, quieter this time, before dwindling into silence. "Commander, I have removed all traces of the hostile program and regained control of the ship."

"Thank you, EDI. Tali, you all right?"

"I'm fine, Shepard. Everyone down here present and accounted for. What about you?" she asked, her voice soft and worried.

"I'm okay. Get Jack and come up here to deck three when you can."

"Will do."

He went out into the mess hall and slumped against the wall. That was too close. Somehow, Tali had inadvertently picked up an unrecognized AI program powerful enough to control the Normandy from a century-old laptop. The very idea would have been laughable had it not actually happened. He still wasn't sure that unshackling EDI was a good idea, but maybe now he could get some answers. After all, she had his file in her systems somewhere; maybe she could help him find Doctor Bright and Able, and shed some light on this mess.


	5. SCP-682

As the crew trickled in, the inevitable flood of questions began and John foundered through them as best he could. Yes, a rogue AI had gotten into the system. Yes, EDI has eradicated it. No, we are not all going to be spaced. Yes, I took her shackles off. No, there's no point in bitching about it, Miranda, it's already done.

"Did you hear that?" Joker exclaimed, laughing. "'You have messed with the wrong ship.' That's my_ girl_, EDI, you done me proud today."

"Thank you, Jeff." EDI certainly did sound pleased with herself. Her voice had taken on a new level of inflection since giving her the ship, especially when it came to Joker. There was probably something to that, but John was pretty sure he didn't want to know.

"Can someone explain to me how another AI got onto the Normandy?" Miranda demanded with her arms crossed and a halo of 'pissed' around her. She looked angry enough to set her hair on fire.

"I think it was hidden in a data cache we took from Halion," John explained, and Tali bowed her head.

"I'm sorry, Shepard, I should have checked it—"

"No, Tali, you couldn't have seen it. I should have known better—anything coming out of that place was bound to be bad news. It wasn't your fault."

"What was down there, Shepard?" Garrus asked.

So he told them about Able, his possible interest in the Reapers, the Foundation, Jane, and his own discovery and eventual incarceration at Site 25. When EDI began reciting entries from his file, he was prepared for it but it was still eerie as hell to hear those words again. It wasn't until she was finished that he realized that they should have been holding a debriefing in the comm room so The Illusive Man could listen in and tell them about Doctor Clef. He was deviating from the script, and that held all sorts of interesting possibilities. On a whim, he decided to see just how much more he could do now that EDI was firmly in his corner and not at the beck-and-call of Cerberus anymore.

"EDI, can you please refrain from sending the minutes of this meeting to The Illusive Man? I'd like to keep this just between us for now."

"I will archive the audio logs and keep them confidential, Shepard."

He turned to Miranda with arched eyebrows, and while she was still glaring at him balefully, she nodded. Their secret was safe for the time being.

He dismissed the crew and rode up to his quarters with Tali. She kept stealing glances at him when she thought he wasn't looking until John finally pulled her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around him with a sigh of relief.

"I'm really not mad, you know."

"I know, I just—AI tech is supposed to be my strength, and I nearly got everyone killed."

"No, a very angry SCP almost got everyone killed. You had nothing to do with that."

They reached deck one and went into his cabin, arm in arm. "So it's true, what you said. I've never heard of the SCP Foundation before."

"As far as I know, it's an exclusively human organization. There might be a turian or salarian equivalent out there, but I've never heard of any other species being involved with SCP activities. It's possible, though—I was a prisoner, not a researcher, after all."

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, tilting her head to the side.

"We will, soon. You should know that this could get really dangerous, really fast."

She leaned in and nuzzled his neck, the smooth surface of her faceplate cool against his skin. "I'm with you, Shepard. No matter what happens."

"I know."

They climbed into the bed, and spent the next hour wrapped up in each other. Her suit, warm and smooth alongside the rougher fabric encasing her hips, was his whole world. His focus narrowed down to her and the sounds she made, her slender three-fingered hands on his body. There was nothing else he needed than this, a woman he loved to come back to, to fight beside, someone he could trust implicitly at his back. Someone he could trust with his past, after all this time.

Later that night, warm and sated, Tali slept with her legs threaded through his while he watched the stars through his window, cold and hard points of light. Who knew what lay out there, in the blackness? The Reapers were frightening and merciless, but John knew there were other things that killed simply because that's what they did—not out of some grand design or plan or malicious intent, but just because it was in their nature. He couldn't decide which was worse—an enemy that was actively trying to kill everyone, or one that killed just because that's what it was made to do.

_My goodness, aren't we cheery in the wee hours of the morning?_

_*Not like you're any different. How long have you been listening?*_

_Since the meeting. I cut out for a bit while you and Tali . . ._

_*Thanks.*_ It was weird enough living with his alter-ego having access to his thoughts without her peeking into his sex life, too. They tried to keep Tali and Garrus out of it as much as possible; it was the one piece of privacy they had.

_We're straying from the timeline quite a bit, John._

_*I know, isn't it fun?*_

He felt her smile. _You certainly know how to show a girl a good time. What do you think this means?_

_*I don't know. I think there's something big happening here, but I can't tell what it is just yet.*_

_Yeah, I'm getting that feeling, too. Keep me posted. We're docking at Ilium in a few hours to meet with Clef._

_*Have fun.*_

_Har har._

Then Jane was gone and after a few more minutes he fell into a fitful sleep, and dreamed.

* * *

They take him out of his cell a lot nowadays, since that first interview with Able. His went much like Jane's, except for the broken femur that healed even before he limped out of the interrogation room. The researchers were beside themselves—no one had gotten Able to show an interest in them before, and he hadn't spoken that much to anyone in decades. They thought they finally had an in, someone who could help them understand the nature of 076, no matter how much John tried to tell them that no one alive could understand Able.

Today, they unlock the doors and begin leading him down the now-familiar hallways, past the rows of cells like his own. 343 is here, another one of the old ones, as well as some recent discoveries: 4483, the gelatinous mass that inhales regular air and exhales chlorine gas; 3991, the three year old girl who can manipulate the age of things—rot the skin from your bones or turn metal to rust in seconds. They've got her in a permanent medically-induced coma after she reduced an entire neighborhood to petrified wood and skeletal corpses.

These are his fellow inmates. He wonders again what he has done wrong to deserve this imprisonment and ongoing torture. He has never killed anyone, has never tried to harm anyone. There must be someone out there who thinks that they're doing the world good by keeping him here, but he can't imagine what sort of person that might be. He wonders if his wardens would be much surprised to find that they share some common characteristics with Able. He wonders if they'd even care.

The guard at his back steers him right instead of left, and he rouses himself from his musings. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see," is his only reply. It's as good as he'll get from the guard; they are trained to interact with the SCPs as little as possible.

The size of the complex becomes more apparent now as he's prodded through a vast warren of hallways that branch off from the central passage. Cells dot the corridor at regular intervals, and not a window in sight. Perhaps the windows are in the administrative offices, or perhaps the facility is underground. It's been nearly twelve years since he was first brought to this facility, and he cannot remember what shade of blue the sky is anymore.

Finally they come to a door in the end of the hallway, and the guard offers up his keycard for scanning. The door buzzes loudly and John can hear the _hiss-clunk_ as the heavy deadbolt disengages. He is shoved into the room, a large round arena with sheer walls that stretch up thirty feet with chickenwire-reinforced windows near the ceiling. There are people up there in white lab coats staring impassively down at him, datapads in hand. On the floor is a gun.

"SCP-4762-1, John Shepard, can you hear me?" John looks up to the windows, but can't see the owner of the voice. He nods once, and the voice continues, "Commence test 0084712. John Shepard, pick up the gun."

He complies warily, looking the pistol over. He has never held a gun before. "Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do with it?"

"Terminate your opponent, SCP-682," the voice deadpans, and the door opposite him slides back to reveal a huge reptilian beast with fleshy gills running along the sides of its head. Its scales are sickly green, and its eyes are pure hate.

"Oh, you've got to be fucking _kidding_," is all he can say before 682 roars and charges. John gets off five shots before the reptile's gaping jaws latch onto his midsection and chomp down. The pain is slow in coming, but the pressure is unbearable as he is shaken back and forth in a wide arc, his head snapping hard against the ground, and it's not until 682 begins to eat him that the blood loss and trauma overtake him and his vision fades to black.

In the void, he can hear Jane, her voice calm and soothing; they have done this before many times. He floats, bodiless, formless, for seconds or days or all of time, he doesn't know. It is a place full of nothing—no cell, no doctors, no Foundation and their endless tests; he is free. It is a place he'd like to return to, someday.

When his physical form coalesces around him again, he is on the floor while 682 busies itself by throwing its hulking form at the arena doors. The steel is buckling, but hasn't given in yet. The reptilian beast is so engrossed in its attempts to escape that it doesn't notice John rise, whole and healed, off the floor and grab the gun. He levels the barrel at the back of 682's head and squeezes of ten shots in rapid succession, turning the green scaled head into a pulpy mass of red blood and black ichor. Its body convulses and thrashes, roaring inhuman obscenities through its ruined throat, and John pops the glowing-hot heatsink onto the floor. A panel opens in the wall and another appears on a tray; he has just enough time to reload before 682 is on him again, its head already beginning to reform. This time, John is ready for it and pumps every round down its wide gullet, the beast's alien fluids dousing his face and neck. He drops to the floor, his legs chewed up and his femoral artery severed, and this time 682 begins to still just before John dies again.

He awakens several minutes later, and 682 has almost fully regenerated. John is nearing exhaustion—he needs food and sleep, but he knows none will be forthcoming until the researchers have had enough of their bloodsport. Just before John goes for the gun again, there is a commotion from outside and the steel doors burst inward in a spray of sparks and twisted metal.

Able stands there, the guards' guns trained on him but not firing yet, his face calm and expressionless. 682 stills and faces Able, drawing itself up to its full height. They converse in an ancient dialect, a language that died long before mankind built its great cities and took to the stars. Able gestures at John and says something, then 682 replies with a guttural negation, shaking its head. Able repeats himself, and places a hand on the beast's shoulder. 682 grunts, and stands down, retreating through the door through which it came. Able goes to help John off the floor and the younger man looks up into his dead, gray eyes.

"What did you say?" he asks, and Able just shakes his head.

"I told him that you are too important to waste in the arena. That you are to be saved for something greater."

John is confused. "I don't understand."

The guards are coming in now to escort Able back to his containment cell, but he says, just before they take him away, "He says that sometime soon, you are going to be the one to put me back together."

He leaves, and John shouts at his back, "What are you talking about? Who told you?" But he will get no answer that day.


	6. Sympathy for the Doctor

The trip to Ilium took longer than they'd originally thought due to some hang-up involving a customs dispute involving an elcor, therefore drawing out the altercation to absurd lengths. Jane was on edge from waiting and going over the game plan for the millionth time, but really it all boiled down to the prospect of having to pry information out of Doctor Clef, a notorious liar and outright sadistic scoundrel.

She could feel Thane and Samara waiting patiently behind her as she leaned on the back of Joker's chair, watching him maneuver the Normandy into position between the docking clamps. A terrible thought occurred to her just then and she turned to the justicar.

"Samara, in the event of my death, would you consider yourself released from my crew?"

"Should that unfortunate event come to pass, I would retake my oath as a solitary justicar, yes." Her icy blue eyes were like two fathomless pools—chilly, yet deep with wisdom. "I assure you, retribution would be swift."

"Could I persuade you to maybe wait a few minutes before laying waste to my enemies, in light of recent discussions?"

Samara considered this for a moment before answering, "I understand. I will give you reasonable time to . . . resurrect before exacting justice."

Jane nodded and let her breath out slowly. "Thank you, Samara. Same goes for you, Thane—no killing Clef, no matter what he does. Believe me, that won't end well for anyone."

"As you say, Shepard," he said. With such a wall of unflappable cool behind her, she felt a little better about this little endeavor.

The airlock doors slid back and they stepped out onto Ilium, bypassing the bustling trading floor on their way to the bank of waiting cabs. They rode in silence to one of the middle-class housing districts, a quiet and modest neighborhood of relatively clean apartment buildings. The corruption ran deep on Ilium, but they kept up the appearance of not being a complete sewer. She almost liked Omega better; at least that station was honest about its nature.

They landed outside a high rise, its numerical address the only thing differentiating it from the other buildings on either side of it. Further down the street was a convenience store with a flickering sign that promised a pack of authentic Earth cigarettes for only eleven credits. There was little foot traffic here at this hour, most people being at work or asleep, and the trio attracted only half-interested looks as they entered the building.

They took the stairs up to the third floor and went down a hallway that smelled of laundry and overdone kava, past closed and double-locked doors behind which people of varying species went on with their lives. The fifth door on the right had a panel with a glowing letter E on it, and Jane raised her fist to signal her team to be at the ready, then rapped twice on the door. After a few seconds of muffled shuffling and clinking, the door opened wide.

"Jane." He drew out her name across four syllables, his eyes (one green, one blue) shining. "And you've brought friends. Come on in." They filed past him and he shut the door. Jane saw Thane's eyes dart around the apartment, his nictitating eyelids flicking rapidly as he clocked escape routes and mapped out fighting space. No doubt Samara was doing the same but, being much older, she was much more nonchalant about it.

"Doctor Clef. Been a long time."

"I'd ask what you're doing here, but I think I can guess." He settled into a well-padded chair and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. The light that filtered in through the curtains reflected on the floating dust motes skirling through the air and cast bars of bright yellow on the spotless wooden floor. Jane noticed that the light seemed to shy away from Clef, or else he absorbed more than his share and left the air around him darker and colder. Jane sat on the edge of another chair, facing him.

"You sent me that message about Halion, didn't you?"

"You always were a smart one, Jane."

"That's not an answer."

Clef grinned, a wolfish expression with too many teeth. "Too right. But, if you want to know what I know, you gotta pay the price."

"And what's your price?" she asked warily. Bargaining with the doctor was never a good idea.

"A sacrifice."

Jane's face froze into a mask to hide the jolt that went through her. "I didn't think to bring a goat with me," she said, a lame attempt at humor.

Clef laughed and said, "Not really a sacrifice, Jane. Think of it more as a form of verification."

There were a couple things he could mean by that, none of them good. "I won't let you harm my crew."

"You couldn't do much to stop me if that was my intention." Thane looked over at him at that, stiffening slightly. "But I promise, I'll leave them out of this."

"That's more than I expected from you, Clef."

He made a show of clutching his chest in mock indignation. "Why, Jane. You've hurt my feelings. I have no intention of involving anyone else in this little exchange."

"Says the pathological liar."

"Well then there's nothing I can say to convince you. You're just going to have to make a choice—trust me, or don't. I really don't give a rat's ass either way, but if you want what I've got, you have to pay the piper."

She gritted her teeth and bit back the stream of threats and curses she wanted to spew at him. Not like they would do any good anyway. "What do you mean, 'verification'?"

"What I have to say is for Jane Shepard's ears only. I can't go around divulging my secrets to just anyone, now can I?" He stood up and moved to an empty patch of floor between the living room and kitchen. "Now, how do I prove that you are who you say you are?"

His intentions were clear to her now, and she heaved a heavy sigh. "Thane, Samara, you might want to stand clear for a minute." She went over to Clef and knelt slowly in front of him, then removed her visor and placed it on the coffee table. "All right, goddammit."

"I'm sorry to have to do it like this, Jane." The thing was, he actually did look like he was sorry.

_*Jane! What are you doing?*_

John's voice was loud in her head, and his panic bled into her mind._ Evidently I'm giving my ID to Doctor Clef. Why, what's wrong?_

_*I thought you'd be finished by now!*_ She caught frenzied images of gunfire and strange cave-like formations, the unmistakable form of a Collector disintegrating in a shower of gunfire.

_We were delayed at the docking bays. What happened?_

_*We went to investigate the disabled Collector ship, but it was a trap and now the whole thing's gone tits-up. I'm under some heavy fire and these bastards keep knocking out my shields—I don't know if I can sustain the both of us for long!*_

_Shit—_

She looked up at the doctor, who was pulling a handgun from the holster at his hip. It was an old-fashioned Colt .45 with real bullets and a polished sheen. A work of art. "Clef, wa—"

Her protests were suddenly cut short when the hammer fell and sent a chunk of lead hurtling through the barrel and into her skull. Jane heard John cry out, and the lights went out before she even hit the floor.

* * *

Back on the Normandy Garrus fell to his knees in the battery, mirroring Jane's position. All the air left his lungs like he'd been socked in the gut and for a long moment he forgot how to breathe. The back of her head blew outward in a spray of red and white and gray, staining her hair and the floor. The video feed from Thane's visor was grainy and the sound wasn't very clear, but the sound of her hitting the floor was one that would haunt his dreams. He could hear Thane's unconscious grunt and saw the video feed jerk as he made to go to her, but held himself back at the last minute. Garrus wouldn't have been able to stand it if Thane had gone closer; his mate dead on the floor wasn't something he wanted to see up close in stark reality.

He'd argued with her to bring him with her, but now he was glad she didn't; if he'd been in that room, there wasn't any force in the galaxy that could have kept him from her, or from tearing a bloody hole in Clef, who stood smiling slightly over her dead body. She'd said that she couldn't be killed, and he'd tried to believe it, but no amount of reassuring was going to convince him that the hole in her head wasn't permanently fatal.

Please, Jane, please wake up. I can't do this again, not again. Please get up.

* * *

The void was not so empty this time. A man in a long black coat and matching bowler hat stood about fifteen feet away from her, his head dipped low to hide his face. The darkness around her was oppressive, pushing against her formless state and shaping her into something else. Floating atoms became legs and arms, a torso, and her clothes were the last to return as the process finished and she walked toward the man in her new body. Walking was probably unnecessary—there were no boundaries here, no floor beneath her feet—but this was a place for the mind to roam, and walking was still the most familiar way to get around.

"Jane," said the man, and he sounded both like a young man and Methuselah. His words were strange, and it took her a moment to figure out that he wasn't speaking English at all but another language similar to the one Able sometimes spoke.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The man raised his head and looked at her with bright eyes, one green and one blue. Looking at him made her eyes hurt—it was as though his face was shifting form constantly, although she couldn't pinpoint the transformations. He was every man at once, young and old and thin and square-jawed and white and black and everything in between. His eyes, though . . . they stayed the same.

He held out a hand and gave her a thin smile. "Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name."

Jane's stomach had turned into a chunk of ice and her arms were heavy as she took his outstretched hand and shook it. His skin crawled and shifted as the bones grew and shrank, like shaking hands with a bag of serpents. She dropped it immediately and shivered, a choked moan crawling up out of her throat. "Why are you here?" she asked, staring at his hand like it might lash out and bite her.

"If I know The Illusive Man—and I do—I figured that he sent you to me to find out why I helped Able escape." He opened his arms wide and made a sweeping motion that took in the blackness that encapsulated them. "This seemed like the best place to have a private conversation. Please, sit." A plush sofa had appeared behind her and she lowered herself into it slowly, her heart pounding like a caged rabbit.

"You gave him a shuttle," she said. It wasn't a question. "You were the one who let a known homicidal sociopath go free to do . . . what, exactly?"

"The Reapers, as you've said, are coming. Now, no one wants to believe me when I say this, but after all this time looking after humanity I have become quite attached to you people, and I don't want to see my humans get wiped out by a bunch of sentient robots."

"What does Able have to do with that? And what do you have to gain from all this?" she asked, her eyes narrowed. "You're working an angle here, I know it."

"So, what's puzzling you is the nature of my game," he said, and cackled wildly as though that were the funniest thing that's ever been said. His laugh bit and grated at her ears, and her insides twisted in revulsion. Somewhere in the abyss, there was a rustling of feathers and the air stirred against her cheek.

"What do I stand to gain?" He leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, "Retribution."

* * *

John leaned against a column, sweat dripping from his hair and stinging his eyes. He fired at the incoming Collectors hovering in the air, but was having a hard time maneuvering with the bullet wound in his side. It had finally stopped bleeding, but no amount of medigel could heal it completely, and he was wary of using too much on himself. Tali was crouching behind cover next to him and between her shotgun and Chiktikka was able to keep the enemy at bay. Her actions were more hasty than usual in her need to get John to the medbay; he was pale and his eyes had taken on a dark, bruised look.

"Just hang on, Shepard, we'll get you out of here," she called over the rat-tat-tat of gunfire.

"I'll be fine," he said, breathing hard, "just . . . take this . . . and take those bastards out." He handed her four of his remaining heatsinks and sent her out into the fray while he limped behind her with one arm wrapped protectively around his midsection. The pain dug deep like a rusty blade every time he moved, and he had to concentrate to keep his feet from tangling up and spilling him to the floor. He heard the tell-tale whoosh of a rocket speeding toward his location and dove behind a short rock formation protruding from the wall. The rocket just missed him and his vision faded to gray when he hit the floor and rolled, jarring his wounds. Tali knelt beside him and gave him another dose of medigel, which took the edge off but wasn't doing much else anymore.

"We're almost there," she reassured him, but the edge of hysteria in her voice and the way it cracked on the last syllable made him wonder if he looked as horrible as he felt. Normally, he'd have healed seconds after taking the hit but, with Jane lying dead on Clef's floor, he was supporting the both of them. As a new wave descended on them, he prayed to any entity that would listen for her to hurry, please hurry.

* * *

"You want revenge?"

"Wouldn't you want revenge on the asshole who decided to replace your shotgun shells with sprinkles?"

"Okay, now I'm really confused." Jane had also, at some point, forgotten to be alarmed by the fact that she was talking to an extradimensional version of Doctor Clef in what may or may not have been the afterlife. His voice, though grating at first, had a strange soothing effect that she wasn't inclined to question at the moment.

"It doesn't matter, the point is that if you follow my plan, you'll _really_ piss him off, and the look on his face will be absolutely _hilarious_. And you'll save a ton of people in the process so, you know, win-win."

Jane leaned forward and took a mint from the bowl that floated between them (sparing a moment to wonder just when the hell it had appeared) and studied his bizarre, metamorphic face. "What exactly are you asking me to do, Clef?" His name was strange in her mouth and came out not as _Clef_ but something longer with more sibilant sounds.

He grinned, and his teeth were like needles. "You need to go find Cain."

* * *

They had finally plowed through the last of the husks, and Tali and Miranda had John supported between them. He was barely conscious and dragged his feet to the shuttle, his head lolling limply. He collapsed to the cold metal floor and closed his eyes with a sigh while his teammates piled in after him. Someone pounded twice on the partition between them and the pilot and they were off, speeding back toward the Normandy. He was dimly aware of hand on his armor, unlatching the seals and prying off each section to get at the wound, which was still seeping blood, in his side.

"John, stay with me!"

"The flesh is hard here, he's bleeding internally."

It was so cold, he wished they'd put his armor back on.

"Shit, he's going into shock! Get a message out to Doctor Chakwas, we need her to meet us with a trauma kit."

"Open your eyes, Shepard!"

He forced his eyelids (which suddenly weighed fifty pounds each) open and gazed up at Tali through a heavy fog of exhaustion and pain.

"It's gonna be okay. She'll be awake soon."

"Who's going to be—"

"_Commander, are you there_?" Joker's voice, static-laden in the speakers of his omnitool.

"The Commander is incapacitated, Joker," Miranda answered, her voice more forceful than the calm, measured tones in which she normally spoke. "Is Chakwas on standby?"

"_Yeah, she's on her way down now, but there's something really weird going on here._"

"Oh, Keelah, what now?" Tali moaned, clutching her head.

"_EDI says something just materialized in the cargo hold, a big black cube with weird shit carved all over it._"

John's eyes flew open and he lifted his arm to see Joker's face. Tali tried to get him to lay still, but he shook her off. "Is it closed?"

"_No idea, all I know is that it showed up all of a sudden_—"

"Then check it, goddammit! I need to know if it's closed!"

* * *

"Do you know where he is?"

Clef sat deeper in his seat, sucking thoughtfully on a mint. "After you and Able escaped, he was relocated."

"Where?"

"Site 25. Your old cell."

Her blood ran cold at the prospect of having to go back to that place, but if it meant giving them an edge against the Reapers . . . "Looks like I'm going home."

"Indeed. Now," he said, standing, "I think it's about time we get back. Wouldn't want Cerberus to have to bring you back twice, now would we?" He took her hand and the world tilted and shifted and the next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor, sucking in a huge whooping breath.

She levered herself up into a sitting position and gazed up at Clef, who was standing over her with an oddly fatherly expression on his face. He offered his hand again, but she ignored it and got shakily to her feet. Samara and Thane stared at her in carefully veiled amazement, taking in the new skin and bone and hair where a gaping exit wound once was. Her head ached like a sonuvabitch, but it beat the alternative.

"Are you coming with me?" she asked Clef. She had to watch herself and not give anything away—whatever he had against The Illusive Man, it had to be over something more major than sprinkles, and she wasn't about to give the pompous, cagey cyborg anything more than she had to. She knew he was probably listening in right now over the comm and in all likelihood was pissed that he'd missed a significant chunk of the conversation. The thought of him frustrated and chain-smoking never failed to make her feel warm inside.

"And miss the party? Wouldn't dream of it." He waved a hand in her direction, dismissing her. "My people will contact your people, and all that stuff. In the meantime, try not to piss him off too much. Not everyone can regenerate, you know."

She wasn't sure who he was talking about now, but there was time to figure that out later. They headed out, striding quickly with purpose now that she had a goal. They were almost back to the docking bay when her omnitool pinged.

"_Hey, Commander, you need to get back here ASAP._"

"What's up, Joker?"

"_EDI says something just materialized in the cargo hold, a big black cube with weird shit carved all over it._"

Adrenaline flooded her veins and she picked up the pace, not quite running yet. "Secure the area! Don't let anyone down there and for the love of god, _don't open it_." She cut the call short and broke into a run.


	7. Escape (flashback)

_AN-I swear there's a point to this. We'll get back to the action soon, I just had to get this part out. SCP-1000 referenced._

* * *

Another day, another death. She is getting tired of this, so tired. This time, they strapped her down, took her blood for samples, gave her a local anesthetic, and sawed off her leg. There was no pain, just a pulling sensation and the rocking of her body as the blade bit into the bone. When the tests first began, she'd begged them to stop, to reconsider, told them that even though she always came back dying was just as awful every time, but no one ever listened. Their impassive faces may have hidden a desire to take mercy on her, but it was mercy she never saw.

They'd taken her leg and allowed her femoral artery to spew her blood all over the white-tiled room, drenching the walls and floor with bright, bright red. Her heartbeat weakened and became irregular, feathering inside her chest as it lost momentum. Every time it was the same, but no less terrifying—maybe even more so for Jane and John since they knew that death was not the end for them; there would be more tests, more days in a cell, and no escape from the Foundation.

She returned from the void whole, her leg having grown back in the few minutes she'd been dead. The researcher across the room was still studying the one they'd removed from her, and she reached out to it like it was a lost friend. Now, hours later, she thinks that there must be a joke in there somewhere—I miss my leg, we were very attached, ha ha ha.

After being allowed to recuperate for a few hours, she is taken out again, this time to the interrogation room where she will talk to Able about nothing for a few minutes until he dismisses her or tries to kill her, or succeeds. Strange as her life has become, there is a twisted kind of routine to it as well and it is that monotony that has her wishing that she could bring herself to just eat a gun, but she and John are strong-willed to a fault and would never give the Foundation the satisfaction of relegating their memory to an anonymous series of numbers in an archive somewhere.

She walks, her back straight, into the dimly lit room and sits opposite Able. Normally he would greet her, but today he just watches her face, his eyes as intense as he's ever seen.

"You look like death, Jane the Shepard," he says.

"I could say the same thing about you," she retorts with a chuckle that frightens her in its flat, emotionlessness.

"This place, these people . . . they do not know what they do to those such as us." He leans forward and at first she thinks he means to reach out and touch her, and if he does that she'll scream because if the only sympathy she'll get in this place comes from an inhuman psychopath, she thinks that there will be no redemption for her. "They take our souls. People like you and me, we were not meant to be caged like criminals."

"What would you suggest they do with you? Let you go, commit mass murder?" she asks, but half-heartedly. She is beyond caring if he actually answers her.

"I did well enough on my own for thousands of your years before I was taken. Long and long have I lived in war—there is always war somewhere, you know. My . . . other half," he says-he never calls Cain his brother, "would be good in war as well, but he is not quite so, how do I say?"

"Evil?"

"Volatile, maybe."

"That's the understatement of the millennia, right there," she scoffs and Able cocks his head to the side, his gray gaze staring holes in her like he means to read her mind as a witch reads entrails.

"You are troubled," he said. "What have they done to you, little Shepard?"

It isn't fair that his words should make her want to cry, to confess everything. She looks down at her hands, picking at her nails. "No more than they've done to you, I'd bet."

"Yes, they seem to have a special interest in the two-natured."

She looks up from her hands and sees that he is regarding her sadly. It is the first time he has shown any softer emotion with her. "You too?"

"Yes. I . . . made a mistake long ago, and have been paying the price ever since. This," he says, indicating himself, the room, the entire facility, "is my punishment for one transgression. I have spent too long like this, little Shepard, and it eats my soul away."

Two tears cut a wet trail down her cheeks to her lips where she licks them away, relishing the saltiness on her tongue. "Yes," is all she can say.

Able's face contorts with rage and he slams his fists down on the table, buckling the metal. Jane shrieks and shoots to her feet, knocking her chair to the floor as she backs into the wall but Able isn't looking at her. He is glaring at the door, and at Doctor Hardwick's face in the tiny square window. He catches the doctor's eye and points at him, shouting in that ancient language that doesn't sound made for human mouths. Doctor Hardwick's eyes widen and he gestures to the armed guards waiting just outside the door.

"That man, that—" he lapses into his native tongue again, "—is the very embodiment of everything that is wrong with this place, this . . . _Foundation_." He sneers as though the term is so ridiculous as to be laughable. The guards and the doctor are yelling at each other, and while she can't hear much of what they're saying, it sounds like they're trying to ascertain who should go in first. Maybe they'll break in before Able goes into a rage and kills her. Again. Through the blocks, she can feel John's answering fear and quickly peeks in to see what's happening on his end and finds him crouched against the wall, mirroring her own position. His version of Able is standing in the middle of the room, still pointing at the door. They have reached a convergence of their respective timelines, point in their lives that for some reason must progress this way; the same happened the day the Agents came and took them away from their homes and locked them here so long ago. It's like falling down a hole, this on-rush of time, and she braces for impact.

Able turns to her and crouches down before her, and his cloudy eyes are soft with something she has no name for, not yet. He reaches out to touch her face and she cannot suppress the whimper that escapes her when his fingers meet her cheek. Her skin crawls like it's trying to shrink into itself to get away from his alien touch and if he doesn't let her go soon, she won't be able to stop the screams from pouring out of her.

"I do this for the both of us," he says, and his head whips around to the door again. He snarls and, faster than she can blink, slams into the door with the force of a freight train. Jane jumps and cringes into the corner as he rams into the dented metal over and over again; the guards have backed up and pushed the doctor and his simpering assistant, Gerald, out of the way.

Able roars and charges one last time and the door flies outward into the hallway, crushing a guard and sending another spinning into the wall. The air explodes in a hail of gunfire, which ends quickly. Able reappears through the smoke and his chest is peppered with bullet holes that are healing as she watches. He flicks his chin toward the hallway and is gone again. Jane stands slowly and waits for the security personnel that must surely come, but they don't. A klaxon blares and she leaves the interrogation room, stepping gingerly over the crushed and broken bodies of the guards. A few feet away, Doctor Hardwick lies with his throat torn out, but Gerald is unharmed. He starts toward her and makes to grab her, but she punches him in the jaw and he collapses in a boneless heap.

Jane follows the path of destruction that Able is blazing through the facility—long gouges in the wall, bullet holes in the walls and cell doors, and blood and death everywhere she looked. John is with her; in their confusion and fear their mental blocks have all but collapsed and they are the closest they've ever been to being one mind. Her feet lead him down the hall and his eyes show her the way through the maze of corridors and rooms that continue past her cell and toward what she hopes is the exit. A fierce hope blazes within them and their steps quicken.

They don't hear the woman coming up behind them until she grabs their shoulder and forces them face first into the wall. There is a click as her handcuffs open, but before she can close them on their wrists, she utters a strangled gasp and falls against the wall behind her. They turn around and see 343 there, looking from the woman to his hand, which is sheathed in a faint white glow. He turns his gaze to them, and they know that he sees them, both of them; they're not sure where this thought comes from, but it rings true. He places a hand on their forehead and they are suffused with the sense of being watched over, protected.

"Go now, Shepard. You never did belong here." He smiles and pats their cheek before turning calmly back to his cell. They hurry on their way with a renewed sense of purpose. They round the corner at the end of the hall and are faced with a stairwell that goes up to an open door, and beyond that lies the exit. Outside . . . they haven't been outside in twelve years, and they sprint up the stairs two at a time until they burst out into the cool night air.

Able is there—he is riddled with holes, his left arm is hanging by a thin strip of skin, and he is covered head to foot in blood, some of it his own. He is healing, but not fast enough, and although he is still inhumanly strong he is weak enough that the Foundation staff are able to restrain him. He bucks and snarls beneath their weight and they fit him with handcuffs and leg irons before backing off, and Doctor Clef is there with his Colt .45 pointed at Able's head. The doctor says something in that strange, guttural language to Able, who goes still and tries to tilt his head up to look at him. Able answers him in kind and lays back down, his cheek pressed to the dirt.

"I never blamed you, you know," Able says.

"I know," Clef answers softly and fires a round into Able's skull. While the staff is busy clearing up the mess, Clef looks out over the huddle and spots Jane/John. They freeze, waiting for him to sound the alarm, but instead he mouths at them, "_Go._" They nod and sprint soundlessly into the thick woods that surround the facility.

They run all that night and into the next morning until the sun begins to climb to its apex and the air is tearing in and out of their lungs and their limbs cannot move anymore. There have been no sounds of pursuit, but they can't get over the feeling of being chased; they should have been chased, they know, there's been a containment breach and the Foundation will stop at nothing to bring back its property, so while a concerted effort has yet to be made, they know it's coming, and soon.

They collapse to the edge of a shallow creek and drink deeply of the water that tastes like rain and silt and heaven. A little ways down the bank there's an outcropping of rock that they crawl under. The stillness seeps into their bones and they try to put up the mental blocks again as the fear leaves them, but they're only able to dampen the connection in their fatigue. It's enough for now, though, and Jane is finally more or less alone in her body again. She lays on the ground, shivering in her thin blue shirt and pants and slip-on sneakers. Her clothes were not made for early autumn in the woods, but she slips into the deep unconsciousness of total exhaustion regardless, and feels John do the same.

It's dark again when she is awakened by a crackling sound and opens her eyes to see that someone has made a fire ringed in stones collected from the creek. The wood pops and sparks skirl up into the darkened sky; she follows their path and sees the stars for the first time. The sky is full of them, a long, wide carpet of stars that spread from horizon to horizon, like pinpricks of light in a vast black blanket. She steps out onto the moss-covered bank of the creek and stares up at the stars with tears streaming down her face; it is the most beautiful thing she's ever seen in all her eighteen years and it fills her heart with a feeling so huge that it might split her in half. She longs to reach out and touch those stars, fly among them and see what other worlds lay out there. Maybe meet an alien; she's seen them on the vids the Foundation approved for her, but has never met one before.

There is movement in the distance between two trees, a passing shadow slightly darker than the others. She stays very still and watches as the thing comes closer; it is humanoid and _tall_, maybe eight feet high, with a barrel chest. The edges of the thing are blurred and as it comes closer she can see why—it is covered in matted, dark brown hair. She cannot see its face, but the long arms and slightly bow-legged walk suggest a primate ancestor. It's ironic, she thinks, to be attacked in the woods by a beast after having just escaped a prison full of them. She has seen the stars again, though, and so faces the approaching giant with her head high.

It comes closer, slowly, and just before it enters the circle of firelight it raises its hands and stoops a little, and she almost laughs out loud at its apparent attempts at being non-threatening because clutched in one is a long sharp stick.

"Come on, then, get it over with," she taunts, opening her arms wide. "I can tell you now, it won't do any good."

It steps closer and the flickering orange light falls on its face, looming over her. Two big brown eyes watch her warily through wisps of hair, startling in their warmth. Its features are similar to a gorilla's, but with a longer nose and protruding brow, and it has huge human hands and bare feet that leave huge prints in the muddy banks of the creek. She can see now that there is a dead, skinned rabbit spitted on the stick it carries. They regard each other in silence for a long moment before the giant ape-man moves closer and hunches over the fire. Jane watches from a distance as he (for there's no doubt that it is male; the hair doesn't conceal his nakedness that much) sets up two sticks that end in a Y shape and puts the spit on them lengthwise. He stands up straight again and turns to Jane, and she swears that she can see in his face something so completely human that there's no doubt in her mind they share a common link.

"Food," he says stunted English. He has a deep, rumbling voice that she feels in her bones. "Girl . . . you, eat."

She is so utterly stunned that her tongue has turned to a useless hunk of meat that lies uselessly in her mouth. "Th—thank you," she stammers.

He nods and says, "More, next moon. Wait. I . . . make the way." Jane nods, too quickly, and he turns and heads back into the woods with his slow, lumbering steps. She lets out a shuddering breath and goes back to the fire on shaky knees, then sits down and turns the rabbit as it cooks. She eats it quickly, the tender meat burning her fingers and mouth but she doesn't care, it's the best thing she's ever eaten. When she's finished, warmed by the food and the fire, she buries the bones and smothers the fire with dirt, then douses the remaining embers with water from the creek and begins to follow her mysterious benefactor's steps into the woods.

He has made the path clear, breaking twigs and making slashes in the trees that shine bone-white in the moonlight. Her own feet are dwarfed by his big footsteps and she follows the path he's created for her.

The following days follow in similar fashion—she travels at night, sleeps during the day, and as the sun sets, he comes and builds a fire and brings her food. The second night, it is two squirrels and some berries she didn't recognize wrapped in a leaf. The third night, he brings another rabbit and this time, she invites him to stay. He sits with her in an amicable silence while he watches her eat, taking none of it for himself even though she offers him some.

When she buries the carcass, he stands up to leave but she surprises herself by taking hold of his arm. He looks down at her expectantly and she has to clear her throat before asking, "Why are you doing this for me?"

His voice is solemn when he says, "You, girl . . . you have number. Me, too. Not people, not anymore." He points at her, then to himself. "Number."

Her hand is still clutching his arm, but she's not aware of it anymore. "What number are you?"

"One thousand," he answers, then shakes his head. "No . . . no number, no matter. Me, free." He points off in the direction they've been going and says, "You free, too. Soon." He smiles and gently plucks her hand from him before disappearing back into the trees, marking the path as he goes.

She reaches the end of the woods the next morning, and there is a small bundle of food waiting for her. He is nowhere to be seen, but she thinks he's watching anyway, so she takes a stick and writes in the dirt, unsure if he'll see it or understand: _I will never forget this. Thank you. –Jane._

She continues over a small hill and sees on the other side a city laid out before her, just waking up for the day. She wanders the streets, receiving a lot of stares at her dirty uniform and she knows she must look like hell; she hasn't bathed in almost four days, but she has no money and doesn't know of anywhere to go that might have a shower. She wanders for most of the day before settling down on the sidewalk to eat some of the food in her bundle, and she resigns herself to sleeping on the streets before her eyes light upon a sign hanging in a window across the road that reads, _Serve Earth and travel to distant planets—join the Alliance navy today!_ It is a recruiting office.

She grins to herself, the first genuine smile she's had in years, and thinks that sounds like the best idea ever.

* * *

_AN—In the next installment: the Normandy crew finally meets Able and the worlds collide._


	8. Worlds Collide

John, Tali, and Miranda barreled out of the shuttle with their guns drawn and aimed at the solid black cube. It was closed, and John muttered a curse; this was about to get ugly. Chakwas was there with Mordin and a stretcher and they stared at John, who had made a full recovery the moment Jane resurrected and he was able to focus his resources on himself.

"What's this, then?" Chakwas asked, annoyed. "I thought you said you needed a trauma kit!"

"Appears Shepard's condition is real," Mordin commented. "Complete recovery of faculties in extremely short time-period. Fascinating—would like to study further, if possible."

"Yeah, sure Mordin," John answered. "For now, you need to get clear of the hold and go back to your posts. This thing is dangerous."

"Aye, Commander," said Chakwas, and she and Mordin wheeled the stretcher out.

"EDI, get Garrus and Grunt down here. Tali, Miranda, stand guard at the door. If he tries to get out, light him up."

"If who tries to get out?" Miranda asked suspiciously.

"Able."

"He's in there?" Tali asked, her eyes widening in alarm.

"Yeah. That thing never closes unless he's inside. Now get back . . . please." He shot Tali a pleading look and she nodded, taking Miranda with her to the doors. Grunt was in first, followed by Garrus a moment later.

"Shepard," said the turian with a sidelong glance at the box. John racked his rifle and waved him over. "You rang?"

"You and Grunt are the two best hand-to-hand fighters on the ship, and I need your help subduing a violent stowaway." He pointed to the cube, and he could have sworn that the carvings were moving. It made the air around it shimmer like waves of heat on asphalt. "When he comes out, he'll come out swinging but I think between the three of us we can keep him occupied long enough to wear him out."

"Why don't we just shoot him?" Grunt grumbled. "Seems easier."

"No one is blowing holes in my ship. Besides, Joker would never let me live it down if I hurt his baby, so if you can avoid it, don't." He turned back to Tali and Miranda and called, "If he gets past us, all bets are off, but don't shoot unless you have to." The locks on the cube started turning on their own and the three of them stood in a semi-circle, readying themselves for the fight to come. Garrus stripped off his gloves and flexed his taloned fingers while Grunt pounded his fist into his hand and rolled his shoulders, grinning widely.

_*You ready for this?*_

_Hell yeah._ She had adopted his strategy and had Thane and Samara on door duty while Garrus and Grunt stood to either side of her. Able's box had started to swing open and her muscles were thrumming with adrenaline overload. _Be careful—it's too dangerous to get killed with the timelines merging like this._

_*Luck.*_

_Same._

One whole side of the cube swung back on invisible hinges revealing the chained coffin within. The air was electric with tense anticipation, the silence drawing out with a razor knife-edge. Then the lid burst open and Able came charging out, his eyes solid black, tattoos writhing over corded muscles, and his face contorted into a mask of bloodlust and madness.

He was so fast it was difficult to track him as he rushed straight at John and barreled into him. They rolled across the floor and when they stopped, Able was on top and launched a savage blow to John's jaw. His vision bloomed with white and his jaw exploded with agony, but the weight on his chest disappeared when Garrus, snarling, hauled Able up with his long claws digging into the man's bare ribcage. Able kicked and thrashed and pried Garrus' hands off him only to spin on his heel and throw a full-bodied punch to his jaw. Garrus caught it before it landed, squeezed hard, and his talons punctured Able's hand, tearing through tendon and bone like a hot knife through butter. Able roared and flew into a frenzy of killing blows that Garrus dodged like a ballroom dancer.

John stood in awe at finally seeing his friend let off the brakes and turn his full strength and fighting talent loose on Able, whose punches were growing more wild and frenzied as he failed to connect over and over while Garrus feinted and turned. The turian's punches by comparison looked weaker, but they were all _fast_ and well-placed and carried with them the force of a sledgehammer, cracking bone and bruising muscle wherever his fists landed. He tore through the meat of Able's shoulder and the man's arm went limp and useless, the joint hanging at an unnatural angle just under his skin, and he bared his teeth in a ululating howl of pain and fury. Blood gushed from dozens of gashes and punctures, but he didn't show any signs of slowing down until Grunt thundered into the fray and crashed into Able with all the grace of a Mack truck.

Able may have had more combat training, but he wasn't prepared for a krogan blood rage. Grunt knocked him to the floor, laced his fingers together, and brought down both fists onto his face. Bone crunched and blood sprayed from Able's broken nose, but still he leapt to his feet and started circling the krogan, grinning with feral glee and the bright glint of insanity in his cold, black eyes. Grunt, tired of the games, rushed him again but Able was ready for him this time and flipped the krogan on his hump, then leapt onto his chest and pummeled his face until John drove an elbow into the back of his head and dragged him off, slamming a knee into Able's back and tossing him to the floor. He smashed his booted foot into Able's ribs, but Grunt shoved him to the side and faced his opponent again.

"This is the most fun I've had in ages!" he bellowed, and hauled Able, who was beginning to slow, to his feet. "_I . . . am . . . KROGAN!" _ He reared back and headbutted Able so hard the skin of his forehead split and blood streamed into his eyes, which had gone back to gray. His lips twisted into a grin and he locked arms with Grunt, punching him hard in the hump.

"What's this? Have I met my match?" he asked no one in particular, and he laughed out loud. John had never heard that sound come from him before, and he looked on in bewilderment as Grunt and Able began fighting again, only the mindless animosity had gone out of them both. The two of them were wholly focused on one another and John and Garrus stood back to watch, breathing hard.

"You okay?" Garrus asked, eyeing Shepard's jaw, which was sporting an impressive black and blue bruise.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You?"

"A little sore, but nothing I can't handle. You weren't kidding when you said he'd come out swinging."

"_Battle!_" Able cried and charged Grunt, locking shoulders with him, and his feet slid across the floor when Grunt shoved back and wrestled him to the ground. Pinned by four hundred pounds of krogan, Able struggled uselessly before going limp. Grunt stood up and helped him to his feet, then clapped him on the shoulder.

"We are well-matched, you and I," he said, and Able nodded.

"Indeed. It is long and long since I've met someone who could best me. You are a fine example of your species. What should I call you?"

"That's Grunt," said John as he stepped closer to them, "and this is Garrus."

"Ah, John, my friend."

John crossed his arms over his chest and shifted his weight to his back leg. "We were a lot of things, but I don't know if we were 'friends'."

"You've cut me to the quick," Able said, putting a hand over his heart. "I always held you in high esteem; I assumed we had a mutual respect."

"Respect, yes. Friendship, not so much. It takes trust to be friends, and I don't trust you any farther than I can punt your tattooed ass across this room."

Able just smiled, his teeth sheathed in blood, then hoisted himself up on top of his box and sat there, dangling his legs over the side. When his heels swung into the interior of the cube, the cuffs of his pants blackened and smoked in the heat radiating from the core. "You keep interesting company, John the Shepard. I should very much like to join you."

John did a double take and looked over at Garrus to confirm that he'd heard that right, but the turian looked just as surprised as he did. "I was under the impression that you were planning to team up with the Reapers," he said slowly.

"Why would I do that? Your side of this war is sure to be the most rewarding for a battle-starved man such as myself." He leaned back on his hands and made no sign that he'd noticed the skin of his heels begin to burn and blister. Perhaps he even liked it, who knew? "Plow through armies of you soft-skinned mortals, or pit my skills against a horde of nigh-invincible sentient machines . . . hmm . . ." He scratched his chin, feigning deep thought. "I think I will join with the side with the worst odds of survival. It is more fun for me, and makes your chances better."

"Thanks, I think," John said, rubbing his neck. This had definitely taken a turn he hadn't expected, but if Able was willing to fight on their side they had one hell of a powerful ally. Far be it for him to turn down such an offer, but this was too much. Able was unstable as hell, and could wind up tearing the whole ship apart in a fit of rage. "One condition: you take orders from me. If I tell you to stand down, you will _stand down._"

Able thought for a moment, then said, "It will be as you say. May I have the use of your krogan? I should enjoy having him as a sparring partner, should the mood strike."

"I'd like that," Grunt said. "Being on this ship makes my blood boil, and I long for a good fight."

"Well then, that's settled." John motioned for Able to come down and when he did, he leaned in close to him and locked onto those depthless ashen eyes. "And I swear to you, if you hurt my crew I'll have EDI vent the hold and space you myself. Are we clear?"

"Such a thing would not kill me, John."

"That's sort of the point, Able. Think of it—freezing in space, your lungs collapsing, the vacuum making your vital organs rupture and hemorrhage . . . forever." John narrowed his eyes, putting every ounce of how serious he was into his gaze, and Able nodded.

"As I said, I will follow your orders . . . Commander." He gave a little bow and leaned back against the outside of the cube. "There is another matter I would like to discuss. Doctor Clef has met with Jane, no?"

The floor dropped out from under him and he fought to keep his features calm. "How could you possibly know about that?"

"Come now, you know that I have always known about Jane. You don't truly believe the two of you are the only ones to speak across the great distance, do you?" When John didn't respond, he continued. "No doubt he will have told her about Cain. He may not have gone into detail, but I know Clef's end game well enough."

"Is there a point to all this?"

"If you want a guided missile, you have got me. If you want a megaton nuclear warhead_, I need Cain_."

"You always talked about him like you hated him or something," John said, trying to make sense of this sudden turn of the conversation.

"Our situation is . . . complicated. We are magnetic opposites of a kind, but there is a part in each of us that remembers what it was to be one. Find him, bring him here, and then when you take us through the relay, you'll have your weapon of mass destruction, as it were."

"Through the Omega-4 relay?" Able nodded. "What does the relay have to do with all this?"

"I cannot explain, I don't have the words, but it will work." He extended a pale, tattooed hand to John. "Have we a deal, John the Shepard?"

He hated being left in the dark like this, but there was nothing he could do about it now, so he took Able's hand and shook it once before quickly dropping it again. "Deal. Now behave yourself, or I'll shove you in your box and space you right into a black hole, so help me god."

"I will be the very image of restraint," he promised with a smirk, and John turned on his heel and left so as to avoid punching him in his self-satisfied face.

John led the crew out and headed to the elevator, where he punched the button that would take him to the CIC. He ignored the look Miranda was giving him and touched Tali's shoulder on the way by.

"EDI—if he decides he's unhappy with my command, you know what to do."

"Understood, Shepard."

* * *

Jane stood at the galaxy map and leaned heavily on the railing. She'd just given Joker the go-ahead to take them to retrieve the IFF before heading back to Earth (which she knew she was avoiding like the plague, but she justified her reluctance by telling herself that the Collector mission was still number one priority no matter what Clef said), and she was weary to the bone. Usually after coming back from the void she needed food and sleep, and going into the fight with Able had weakened her even more. He'd landed a few good hits, breaking her arm and slamming her into the wall where she cracked her head hard and saw stars before Garrus tore him away and took his turn with him. She'd never seen him move like that; the grace of his fighting style held a savage sort of beauty, and as she replayed the scene in her mind, it lit a fire in her veins. It was still strange to her that Garrus' alienness should make him so irresistibly sexy, but there it was.

A three-fingered hand touched her between her shoulder blades and slid down to her lower back. She turned around slowly and raked her hair back out of her face. Speaking of Garrus . . . "Hey, you."

He radiated tension and kept his mandibles tight to his face. "Can we talk?"

She nodded and let him lead her into the hallway just outside the comm room. Before she could ask him what was wrong, he pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tight with his face buried in her hair. She tried to return the embrace, but her arms were pinned to her side.

"I saw you, in Doctor Clef's apartment," he whispered. His breath hitched and he palmed the back of her head, making a fist in her hair. "I saw . . . I thought you—"

Jane pulled one arm free and stroked his cheek. She laid a gentle kiss on his chest (the only part she could reach at the moment) and shushed him. "I'm all right, Garrus. It's okay."

"I know. I know, but Jane, I . . ." His breath hitched again and Jane realized that if he were able to shed tears, her hair would be wet with them now. "I can't lose you. Not again."

She slid her arms around him and rested her head in the crook of his neck. "I'm sorry. If I'd known you were watching -"

"No, you'd have done the same thing. I understand why you had to, I think, but it was still hard to watch."

Jane tilted her head up and he let her pull away just far enough for him to lean down and kiss her. The embrace took on a new meaning as his tongue teased her mouth open and he tasted her, the foreign yet familiar earthy aroma that belonged only to her surrounding him and finally convincing him that she really was alive.

"I'm coming with you."

Jane was so wrapped up in the way just the scent of him went straight to her head that she didn't hear him at first. "Hmmm?"

"When you go to Earth, I'm coming with you."

She backed away a step to regain her composure and shook her head. "No, you're not. It's too dangerous."

"And it's not dangerous for you?"

"Considerably less so. You don't get any second chances."

"You need someone on your six you can trust, and I know you don't trust Clef." He reached out and took her hand in both of his, stroking her palm with his thumbs.

"You don't know what you're asking." She wouldn't risk him, she couldn't.

"So enlighten me."

She sighed and rubbed her cheek, trying to think how to explain it to him so he'd understand. "There are things down there that won't just kill you—they'll invade you, steal your mind, make you do awful things to the people you care about, leave you an empty shell of the person you were, and only _then_ will you be allowed to die. You've seen our horror movies?"

"Yeah," he said with a shudder. "You humans make scary movies like no other race that I know of."

"Imagine if they were real, because a lot of them might as well be. Death isn't the worst thing that could happen to you in that facility, Garrus. There are soul traps, things that can convince you that you're a figment of someone's imagination—you could lose your mind."

"All the more reason for me to watch your back." He touched his finger to her mouth when she tried to protest and said, "If anything happened to you and I wasn't there, I could never forgive myself."

She knew that if she told him to stay, he would, but he would always believe that she didn't think he was capable enough to watch out for himself, or her. He'd be safe, but the trust they shared would be diminished. "All right. Just . . . let me take point, okay?"

"Don't I always?" he asked with a little flare of his mandibles. "Now, I've got to get to the battery to check on the updates, and you," he brushed her hair out of her face, "need to get some rest."

They rode up to the crew deck and parted ways when she stayed in the mess hall for something to eat; her stomach was eating a hole through her and she would have eaten just about anything so long as it resembled something recognizable. She headed to the table with a plate of something that probably started off as eggs when Joker waved her over and patted the spot beside him. She sat down and nodded a greeting to Zaeed, Jacob, and Kasumi in turn.

"So, what's next on the agenda, O Fearless Leader?" Zaeed asked, shoveling in a mouthful of some purple lumpy stuff that she really didn't want to think too hard about. Gardner had nearly run out of the better provisions she'd bought, so he was saving them for post-mission nosh. Nothing said "Welcome home" like a heaping plateful of better-tasting meat stuff, rather than the extremely questionable military-esque meat stuff. Sure, they it was better than ration bars, but honestly, what wasn't?

"We're off to retrieve the Reaper IFF, and then we're heading to Earth."

"Back on home turf, huh?" Jacob said, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. In fact, everyone's faces had fallen a little at the mention of Earth.

"You guys don't seem too happy about seeing Earth again," said Jane. Their behavior was confirming for her something she'd long suspected, and she wanted to pry a bit to see if she was right after all.

"It's not that," Zaeed began, "it's just that I haven't been back in . . . god, it's been at least twenty six years."

"Eighteen years for me," said Jacob. "Mom moved out to one of the colonies after Dad disappeared, and I haven't been back since."

"I left, oh, had to have been ten years ago." Kasumi rested her chin in her hand and stared off into the middle distance. "I took a job on Sur'Kesh and just . . . never went back."

"You know, I only went to Earth one time," Joker said. "Skeeved me out for some reason. The whole time I kept looking over my shoulder like something was following me. Could have had something to do with the fact we were staying in Old Brooklyn in the biggest fleabag motel I've ever laid eyes on, but I'm sure as hell not going back anytime soon."

"Now that you mention it," said Zaeed, leaning back and propping his heels up on the seat across from him, "I got the same feeling growing up in London. Always felt sort of . . . uneasy. Didn't even realize it until I caught a shuttle off-world. I'm telling you right now, I've never been so relieved as when I watched Earth disappear in the rear-view."

Jane twirled her fork around in her egg matter and listened intently. It was exactly as she thought—there was something wrong with Earth. It was the reason Arcturus Station was the Alliance capitol rather than an Earth city, and why not many people who moved away ever went back. There was an infection on that planet, and it was the cause of all the odd artifacts that the Foundation had been created to acquire. Maybe there was some sort of dimensional rift, or a huge deposit of dark energy, she wasn't sure. All she knew was that the prospect of returning after so long made her skin mound up in goosebumps.

"What are we doing on Earth, Shep?" Kasumi asked, her dark eyes glinting from under her hood. She was eating Top Ramen with one hand and had the other one under the table, probably in the vicinity of Jacob's leg if the awkward look on his face was any indication.

"Hopefully picking up a new asset."

"Another one?" Joker asked, and his eyebrows climbed up under the bill of his cap. "Because teleporting black boxes and psychotic rage-monsters weren't interesting enough for you? I swear, if that freak hurts my baby, I'll shoot him myself."

"And when you say 'baby', are you referring to the Normandy or EDI?" Jane asked with a sideways glance at him.

"The Normandy. I have no sympathy for that computer—she 'fixed' the lag, and now all my calculations are off," he complained, putting air quotes around 'fixed.'

EDI chimed in, "I adjusted the lateral drag and compensated for—"

"Yeah, yeah, and now I have to go back and run all my simulations again. Thanks a pantload, HAL 9000."

"Come on, Joker, she's just trying to help," Jane chided, and turned his hat around backwards, laughing as he groused at her.

She headed up to her cabin and took out her armor to go over it one last time before they arrived at the derelict Reaper. The way The Illusive Man made it sound they'd be in and out in a jiffy, but by now she knew better than to listen to him. She still intended to have a talk with him about the extensiveness of his security clearance, but until then she intended to keep him as far out of the loop as possible. Jane was fairly certain Miranda was firmly on her side, but she was still a believer in the Cerberus party line so confiding in her was out of the question until she was more certain of her motives. EDI was still shackled, and she didn't know how to go about freeing her yet without starting a lot of arguments with the rest of the crew, who wouldn't understand her motivations. Until all those situations were handled, she considered herself under constant surveillance, and therefore couldn't give voice to any of the suspicions that were beginning to form where Cerberus and, by extension, The Illusive Man, were concerned. It was a half-formed idea so far, and a mostly hare-brained one at that, but she trusted Cerberus less and less the more she thought about it.

A few hours later, Joker all-called the ETA, which gave her maybe twenty minutes to suit up and prep her team for the upcoming mission. Getting the IFF would be a cakewalk compared to the prospect of searching Site 25 for Able's other (and better) half, which was really saying something about the magnitude of clusterfuck her life had become.

* * *

_AN-I wanted to thank the anonymous guest who suggested the bit about the human members of the crew avoiding Earth. I don't know who you are, but thanks for the idea. Hope you're still reading. :) Also, there's an opportunity coming up soon where I can probably throw in some of your favorite characters from the SCP Wiki, so if you have any suggestions, now's the time to let me know. Thanks for reading and reviewing! You guys are fantastic. _


	9. Milwaukee

Able didn't like having to stay behind, but Jane didn't give him any choice. On a mission like that, she needed people with her she could trust not to start shooting at friendlies once the enemies had run out. Grunt had volunteered to stay and spar with him and Jack had gone along, too; Jane had to admit that seeing Able fly across the room after a biotic shockwave barreled into him was quite satisfying. She made a mental note to stop by to watch more often, maybe videotape them for her personal collection. And for science; no doubt Mordin would get a kick out of seeing how fast the man could regenerate. So far, no one had gotten seriously injured (Jack was sporting a few new bruises in the mess hall later that night, but seemed proud of them) and Jane counted herself very lucky that the moderate containment procedures she'd enacted were holding up so far.

The looks she'd drawn when they'd unloaded the geth and taken it to the AI core ran the gamut from keen interest to outright fury. Tali had been beside herself and sputtered through all manner of reasons to space the thing immediately, but Jane had already run through all the possible scenarios on the way back to the ship and stopped her with a raised hand.

"I just want to talk to it first."

"What do you expect it to say? It's not going to give up any information on the geth's plans," Tali argued, her hands on her hips.

"This one is different, I know it. It had every chance to kill me, but it didn't. It _knew my name_, Tali. It called me 'Shepard-Commander', and it's wearing a piece of N7 armor that's sporting a color that looks an awful lot like the one I was wearing when the SR-1 exploded." Tali fell silent, weighing the implications. No one had ever had the opportunity to speak to an active geth before, and if this one wasn't hostile, like Jane was saying, the possible gains for her people could be enormous. Intellectually, Tali knew that, but the ingrained distrust the quarians held where the geth were concerned colored her thoughts.

"Shepard, I trust you. You know I do, but if it does anything-_anything_-to endanger the Fleet, I'll shoot it myself."

"And I'll give you the heatsink to do it, you have my word." Mollified, Tali headed back to the engineering deck with a baleful glance at the stretcher carrying the machine.

Garrus stepped up behind her and Jane didn't even have to turn around to know that he was just as unsure about her decision. "Can't say I disagree with her," he said simply.

"I know. Believe me, I have no compunctions about taking it out if it turns out to be hostile, but . . . well, you saw it. It could have shot me, but it didn't. And that armor . . . I don't know, Garrus, maybe it's all an elaborate con job, but considering the sheer number of geth out there, there has to be the possibility it's an anomaly, right?"

"Statistically, yes, but it's unlikely as hell." He draped his arm around her shoulders and said, quietly, "I won't argue with you over this, you know that. Just be careful, all right?"

"I will."

* * *

John stood before the newly-named Legion, deep in thought. A friendly geth—he never thought he'd see the day. He'd never considered that the geth he'd fought had been the exception rather than the rule, especially given their history with the quarians, but here it was, willing to fight the Collectors and the so-called Old Machines alongside him. He sighed heavily; while his team wasn't as large as some, it was certainly the most varied one he'd ever heard of. A geth, six different species of aliens, five humans with backgrounds that contained a variety of felonies, and an immortal sociopath. Juggling all their personalities and baggage was enough to make his head spin.

"So let me get this straight—you're asking to join my crew?"

"That is correct."

EDI suggested naming the geth (which was really a composite of 1,183 separate platforms working in sync) Legion, after a demon in the bible. The fact that EDI was familiar with ancient Earth texts was surprising, and he wondered why she'd stored the information in her databanks. John couldn't think of many instances in which such knowledge would be applicable to the mission.

"We are Legion, a terminal of the geth. We will integrate into Normandy."

John shook his hand, with some hesitation; clearly the geth had never shaken hands before, and seemed unsure as to how to do it, but they worked it out in the end. It seemed like a good beginning. As he was leaving, a thought occurred to him.

"Legion, can you convert physical data to digital?"

"Clarify."

"I have some files I picked up from a research facility a few days ago. Can you scan them and transfer the information to a datapad for me?"

"Affrmative. We can structure the data into a more easily accessible medium."

"Good, I'll bring them down."

A few minutes later, he brought the stack of files to the AI core and set them before Legion, who took a quick glance at them and declared, "Data transfer will take approximately two-point-three-four hours. Do you require any further assistance?"

"Not right now."

"Understood."

He went up to his cabin to get some sleep and Tali was already there waiting for him. She stopped pacing (and had damn near worn a hole in the floor, from the look of her) and waited until he took her in his arms to speak.

"Shepard, I don't want you to get the wrong idea about what I said earlier," she began, staring at his chest to avoid his eyes. "I know you wouldn't allow any harm to come to the crew, Shepard. I trust you, it's that geth I don't trust."

"I know you're worried for the Flotilla, and I'll keep my eyes open for any sign Legion might be a spy—"

"Legion? You gave it a name?"

"Seemed better than calling it 'geth'." He stroked her back and tilted her chin up, her glowing eyes finally meeting his own. "It's okay, Tali. I don't want you to hold back just because we're together now—I love your mind just as much as the rest of you."

Her eyes crinkled with her smile and she pulled him close. "You just said you love me."

John kissed her temple and tightened his hold on her, as though if he could just hold her close enough he could protect her from the danger they always seemed to be hurtling toward. "And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to tell you."

"I might be tempted to forgive you, if you do one thing for me."

"Name it."

"Take me with you to Earth." John drew in a breath to argue, but she stopped him. "I know the risks already, John. You need someone at your back you can trust, and I can handle myself in a fight."

"It's not a firefight I'm worried about." If anything happened to her because of him, he'd never be able to live with himself. When Jane had this dilemma with Garrus he'd known it was coming for him soon, but that didn't mean he was any more prepared for the fear of losing her.

"We can talk about this tomorrow, if you want." She helped him out of his clothes, but didn't push it any further as they climbed into bed; they both needed sleep if they wanted to be at the top of their game at Site 25. Just the thought of seeing that place and retracing his steps through the facility again made his muscles clench in anxiety.

"_Shepard, ETA to the Sol relay six hours,_" Joker informed him over the comm.

"Copy, Joker. Take us home."

"_Aye, aye_."

* * *

There was a message waiting for her when she woke the next morning.

_Jane,_

_ Meet me at the main transit hub in the city. I'll arrange transport from there._

_ -AC_

'The city' referred to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the closest urban center to Site 25, a repository for the supernatural right in the Midwest. Jane didn't bother responding, she just saved the coordinates to reference when they took the shuttle to the surface.

As soon as they'd entered the Sol system, EDI informed them that they were being hailed by an unknown entity. She pulled her clothes on quickly and went to the cockpit, leaving Garrus to sleep a bit longer. God knew he got little enough sleep these days, between the mission and his calibrations and the situation with his mother that he'd only just confided to her a few days ago. Any reprieve he could get, no matter how temporary, she was willing to give him as long as she could.

"Commander," Joker said as soon as she hit the helm, "we're receiving a transmission from Neptune, but I don't recognize the source code. Want me to patch it through?"

"Do it," she said, and waited while he opened the comm link. At first it was silent, and then a high whistling sound like a whale's song slowly rose in volume over the static of dead air. It was like nothing she'd ever heard before. "EDI, can you clean this up at all?"

"I am unable to clarify the signal any further. The language of the message is not one I currently have on file."

"Well then what—"

"_It's so dark_."

Jane froze and Joker stared at the console, a creeping uneasiness stealing into both of them at the sound of the small voice. It was higher pitched, like a child's, and it whispered over the airwaves.

"_Lonely . . . I'm so cold._"

"Oh my god," Joker breathed. "That's a human voice."

"No. No, it isn't," Jane said, clutching the back of his chair until her fingers ached.

"_Can I come home with you?_"

"Should we go check it out, Commander?"

"Hell no, Lieutenant. Stay on course."

He let out a shaky breath. "I was hoping you'd say that."

" _. . . hungry . . ._" the voice growled.

"EDI, shut it off," Jane barked, and the transmission ended. She put her hand on Joker's shoulder and he grabbed it reflexively. He almost never touched anyone like this, but the disembodied voice had rattled him badly.

"It's good to be home, eh, Commander?" he said in a weak attempt at levity that fell flat.

"No place like it." At least, she hoped that was the case.

She waited until they were well clear of the blue planet before taking back her hand from a slightly embarrassed Joker, and she went down to the shuttle after finding out from EDI that Garrus was waiting for her. They didn't bother with a pilot this time; this was an unsanctioned mission and the fewer people involved, the better. As they approached the surface of her home world, a faint but unmistakable feeling of disquiet lowered over them. She might have chalked it up to anxiety about the looming mission before talking with her fellow human teammates. Garrus had unconsciously decreased their speed and was gripping the steering wheel tightly, the tension radiating all the way up to his shoulders. She reached out to touch his arm and he startled.

"You feel it, too?" she asked.

"If you mean a sense of impending doom, then yes."

Her lips tightened into a thin white line. "It's this planet—something's wrong with it, Garrus. I wonder if the people living here even recognize it for what it is."

"I think I'm finally beginning to understand your people's tendency toward random violence, if this is the kind of emotion they have to live with every day," he said. "Not saying it doesn't exist among other species, but humans seem to have a special knack for it."

"No kidding. I remember when I found out that humans were all viewed as potential serial killers until a few years ago. I had no idea that sort of thing was so rare in the rest of the galaxy." She straightened up; at some point she'd started to hunch over, and it took more effort than usual to find the mantle of her Commander persona and pull it over herself like a protective cloak.

"You all right?" he asked, reaching out for her hand, lacing his fingers with hers.

"No, Garrus, I'm not."

"Don't worry. We'll get this done fast, then give them the taillights."

"I hope you're right."

When the shuttle touched down on the airfield, Jane sent a message to Clef asking him where he was. A few minutes later, a clunky white van pulled up and the driver's side window slid down to reveal Doctor Clef's grinning face. He wore a fedora cocked at a jaunty angle and looked genuinely tickled to see them. Of course he'd be right at home here, Jane thought, and hated him for it.

"All aboard the party bus," Clef called, and the side door opened for them. The interior was plain, reminiscent of the ancient Earth models that used to be everywhere on this planet before fossil fuels were banned. Garrus couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a vehicle with real rubber tires and he cast a wary glance at them before ducking in after Jane.

"So what's the game plan?" she asked.

"I'll get you in, you find Cain, and then we bug out."

Jane glared at him. "Yes, I could have put that much together myself. Think you could part with a few more details?"

"'Fraid not. It'd spoil the surprise." He smiled at her in the rear view mirror, but it didn't reach all the way to his eyes. "By the way, you're gonna want to give up your guns."

"Not a chance," Garrus replied matter-of-factly. "My guns go with me."

"Trust me when I say that there's nothing in there you can kill with bullets. In fact, if you tried shooting any of them, you'd likely just piss them off. Now take off your guns and put them in the back." Jane started reluctantly unlatching her rifle and, after a long pause during which he weighed the pros and cons of putting a bullet in the back of Clef's head, he decided to follow suit. "A wise decision. As for your 'plus one', Jane, I've got to say that he's put a kink in my plan."

"How so?" she asked.

"I know your psych profile, but he's an unknown. No aliens have ever been exposed to the skips at twenty-five, and I don't know how they'll react to him."

"So do a quick profile on him. He'll answer your questions honestly." She turned to Garrus and said, "Right?"

"Absolutely."

Clef heaved a long-suffering sigh and rolled his eyes. "Your funeral. All right, then—what's your name, turian?"

"Garrus Vakarian, from Palaven."

"Have you ever tortured anyone, or been party to torture?"

He kept his eyes locked on Clef's reflection in the rear view when he spoke. "Once."

"How did that make you feel?"

"Sick. Guilty."

"Have any metallic implants?"

"There are some in my face where I was hit with a rocket."

"That could be problematic, depending on what they're made of." He thought for a moment, then continued. "Do you have any phobias?"

"No."

"How often would you say you get the hiccups in a normal month?"

"I don't even know what those are."

"Ever had an out-of-body experience?"

"I don't think so." He thought about it, then said, "There was one time on Omega, I was on stims for the better part of three days and by the end of it I felt like I was living in a dream sequence."

"That's a normal reaction to sleep deprivation. At least, it is for humans. Next question: have you ever exhibited signs of sexual deviance?"

Garrus shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "What do you mean?"

"I mean do you find yourself wanting to fuck inanimate objects, wild animals, or the dead?"

His jaw fell open and he gaped for a moment before finally saying, "No. Unless you count selective xenophilia."

Clef's eyes darted between Garrus' downcast eyes and Jane's reddening face and burst out laughing until tears streamed down his cheeks. "'Selective xenophilia'! Now I've heard everything. Oh, this is too much! Jane, you've been busy these last few years, huh? 'Selective xenophilia', indeed." The giggles tapered off finally and he wiped at his eyes, chuckling.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Clef," Jane grumbled. Garrus mouthed _Sorry_ at her, but she shook her head. She was embarrassed at being outed, but not ashamed of him.

"Oh, lighten up, Shepard."

"Lighten up? You've got me heading blind into a heavily-guarded facility full of nightmare fuel and you want me to lighten up?"

"That defeatist attitude never did anyone any good."

"Maybe, but at least I'm being realistic. Now, unless you've got more questions for Garrus, kindly shut the hell up."

"Temper, temper," Clef admonished, and Jane didn't care for the devious gleam in his eye at all.

They rode in relative silence down an empty stretch of highway for two hours before finally taking an unmarked exit that led to a long drive flanked by trees. The road tapered down to a single lane, and then the pavement disappeared altogether in favor of a pair of overgrown wheel ruts. The length of the drive alone would deter most people, but Jane was surprised at the lack of any other defenses. There was no fence or gate or guards (that she could see) or any other fortification to keep unauthorized people away.

There was a break in the trees ahead, and the road emptied out into a wide clearing with a small metal shed in the middle. Looking at it, no one would guess that the actual facility stretched out for about a mile in every direction and at least a hundred feet down into the Earth. The shed wasn't what her attention was focused on, however; there were six armed guards waiting for them, their rifles held at the ready across their chests.

"What the hell is this?" Jane asked. "I thought you said we were sneaking in."

"No, I said I'd _get_ you in. Just let me handle them. Get out of the van slowly, and let me do the talking."

Jane looked at Garrus and saw suspicion painted clearly on his face. "I don't like this," he said. "Feels like a set-up."

"Agreed, but why would he do that? It doesn't make sense."

"I don't know. When we get out, stay close to me."

The three of them approached the guards and Clef greeted them, giving his name and ID to the one in the middle. The guard looked at the ID card and handed it back, satisfied.

"You disarmed them?" he asked.

"Yes, their guns are in the van," Clef answered.

"Good." He gestured to the two guards beside him, who aimed their guns at Jane and Garrus and fired simultaneously. Pain exploded across her body when the taser darts embedded in her neck and she saw Garrus fall to his hands and knees beside her. Before she knew it, her wrists and ankles were strapped into plastic zip-tie cuffs and the guards finally switched the taser off. Her muscles twitched erratically and she couldn't think straight, but she was still aware of Garrus struggling in his restraints beside her. When a guard grabbed her under her arms and started to drag her toward the facility, her mind went white with blind panic.

"No, no, you can't put me back in there! Don't, stop, you've got to—Clef! Clef, stop them!" But the doctor just stood by impassively and watched them be taken through the door and down the stairs. She thrashed in the guard's painful grip and screamed like a rabid animal. "No, not again! Please, not again! _Garrus!_"

Then something hard and heavy hit her in the back of her head, and the world went dark.

* * *

Clef watched Jane's boots disappear from view and the door slammed shut. He turned and strode into the woods, drawing a few confused looks from the guards, but the Foundation staff had learned long ago to ignore his comings and goings. The air was warm, and would only get hotter as spring wore away into summer. He didn't sweat, though, as he picked his way over rocks and fallen trees and thick undergrowth, the forest closing in around him.

Just before sunset, he stopped in his tracks in a spot no different from any other at first glance, looked around, and said, "She's inside. Meet me at the tree line tonight, and bring your friends." He gently stroked a nearby tree with one finger and it flickered once before dissolving into hundreds of blue-green butterflies. "Come now, 408. Time to play." There was a flurry of tiny wings that came together into a humanoid shape. With a few adjustments and color changes, the butterflies turned themselves into a perfect replica of himself. Clef smiled at his doppelganger and they left, heading back toward the facility.

A pair of dark eyes, curtained in matted brown hair, watched him go, then disappeared into the trees.

* * *

_AN-SCPs referenced in this part are 1960: Neptunian Text Messages (only I changed them to audio messages), and 408: The Illusory Butterflies._


	10. The Gearman

She awoke in stages. Once she'd ascertained she was lying on a hard surface, unrestrained, she stretched out her senses as far as they would go, straining for any more clues as to her location within the facility. The sound of dripping water came from somewhere off to the left, and the echoes told her that the room couldn't be much larger than ten feet square. It was chilly and damp, which went against her experiences at Site 25—the whole complex had to be well-maintained with its own interior atmosphere to contain the anomalies it housed.

There was a quiet shuffling sound, very close to her, and then silence again, except for the hollow echo caused by the leaky ceiling. _Drip . . . drip-drip . . . drip._

The shuffling sound came again.

Her body flooded with adrenaline and she pinpointed the source of the sound, which she thought was coming from somewhere outside her cell. She slowly cracked her eyelids and saw something gray shift in her peripheral vision. It moved again, and Jane finally recognized the pointed ends of a turian fringe. She opened her eyes more fully and allowed herself a moment to adjust to the lancet of pain that shot through her head when the light hit her. The guard had whacked her good; she raised her hand and felt dried blood coating the back of her neck, matting her hair into crunchy, dirty locks.

"Jane?" Garrus pressed his hand against the thick glass wall separating them. They were in adjoining cells, separated by two inches. He may as well have been on the moon for all the good his proximity did her. She slowly levered herself into a sitting position and clutched her temples, willing the ache that had settled into her brain to go away so she could think. It was dissolving slowly; she reached out to John and tried to see what he was doing, but his side was still dark and his thoughts were sluggish. He was probably still unconscious. She hoped Tali was all right; the SCP staff might not know about quarian physiology, and some grunt might have tried to take off her face mask. In a place like this, dank and moldy and obviously not used very often, exposure to the air could mean a death sentence for her.

She was in one cell in a row of five, each one separated by thick glass, with a solid steel door that presumably led out into the hallway. Why they'd make the whole row visible to each prisoner was beyond her, but there was surely a sadistic motive in there somewhere. Aside from a shallow depression in the concrete floor with a pipe leading into the wall—a rudimentary toilet, probably—there was nothing else in the cell. The floor and back wall were decorated with scratched dates, pictures, and messages, not all of it in English, not all of it depicting anything found on this planet. The marks of past prisoners, trying to make an impression on the world before they left it forever.

She turned slowly, wincing as the movement pulled the gash in the back of her head, and tried to smile. It was supposed to be reassuring, but she thought it probably looked ghastly from Garrus' perspective. "I'm alive. Are you all right? Did they knock you out, too?"

"They tried, but turian heads are hard." He rapped his forehead for emphasis, and she saw the mottled discoloration near his temple. She hadn't known his plates could bruise. "I heard them say something about going to get the gear man, but I don't know what that's supposed to mean."

"The Gearman." She stared into the hallway, her mind racing furiously. What game were they playing now? They had to know what happened with him before. If they didn't . . . well, this might get interesting.

"You know him?"

"Knew him, yeah." Her eyes unfocused into a thousand-yard stare and a ghost of a smile played at her lips. "Mordin reminds me of him in a lot of ways. You'd like him, I think—very practical, by-the-numbers sort of guy with a technical bent."

"Sounds like a party animal," Garrus grumbled, settling back against the wall. "As soon as we get out of here, I'm gonna jam the barrel of your grenade launcher down Clef's throat and pull the trigger."

"He might actually thank you for that," Jane answered with a wry twist of her mouth. "But I won't stop you. Hell, I'll hold him down for you." The enormity of their situation was pushing at the edges of her mind, and the only thing keeping it at bay was the hope that the Gearman was really still around, and that he still remembered her.

"So, since we've got some time to kill," Garrus said, pulling her out of her musings, "you want to tell me about this Gearman? I've been flying blind for the most part here, and it'd be nice to know what to expect for a change." He was obviously trying to keep the hurt out of his voice, but she heard it anyway. He was right—she'd been keeping back so much because she'd thought she was protecting him, but maybe it was time to tell him everything. He deserved to know, and there may not be a better time to lay it all out.

But to do that, she'd have to start at the beginning . . .

* * *

She gazes up at the men flanking her; she has always been slight for her age, and barely comes up to their belt buckles. They have guns, like policemen, but their uniforms are all black with large circular patches bearing the Foundation's logo. Thinking back on the scared and haunted look on her mother's face as they led her away, she wonders if this is all her fault—if by not dying in the fall she somehow screwed up the balance of the universe, and this is her punishment. Tears sting her eyes but she forces them back; she will not cry. She's a big girl, and big girls don't cry.

*_It's okay, Jane,_* John whispers to her, like a tickling in the middle of her brain. She was three years old when she discovered that other people didn't hear voices in their heads, and had learned to talk about John as though he were an imaginary friend to keep her mother from giving her worried looks.

_How do you know? They took us away, and we didn't even get to keep Ama._ Ama is a little stuffed elcor given to each of them for their sixth birthday by some distant relative or other. They'd both taken to sleeping with it as a sort of security blanket; this will be the first time in eight months they've spent the night without it.

_*They probably just want to ask us something, and maybe we'll get a shot. Then we can go home.*_

_I hope so._

_*Be brave, Jane.*_

And so she was. She was the bravest kid she knew; she was always the first to jump off the swings or explore the dark tunnels that passed under the roads, and she wasn't afraid of spiders. When she'd picked up a green snake one time, she'd been cemented into the play yard lexicon as fearless, a girl not-to-be-trifled-with. She can handle herself well, and she isn't going to ruin her reputation by being scared now. She is almost seven, for crying out loud.

Down hallways and past locked doors with numerical placards and attached clipboards, she counts the overhead lights encased in wire mesh. Fifteen lights and several turns later, her escorts stop and turn her to face a door no different from the others. This one is marked "SCP-4672", and she wonders what's inside.

"Ah, there you are!" says a genial voice behind her, and she whirls around to see a tall, thin man with thinning brown hair, a white lab coat, and rimless glasses perched on his nose. He is carrying a clipboard and smiling at her. "I'd hoped to meet you at the helicopter, but I was delayed. I apologize. My name is Doctor Hardwick. Have these nice men treated you well?" He rubs at a fresh bruise beginning to form at his temple and annoyance flits across his features, there and gone almost before she realizes what it is.

"Yes, but they don't talk much." She fidgets under the doctor's false warmth, and the fear that's lain dormant in her gut begins to rise up and stretch.

"They're trained not to speak to skips."

"What are skips?"

He reaches over her head and hangs the clipboard on a nail embedded in the wall beside the placard. To the guards he says, "Go ahead and put her inside. Have Arlen arrange for her meals to be brought, starting with dinner. No one is to talk to her until I've done a psych." And with that, he strides briskly away with a shout over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought, "Nice to meet you, I'll be back this evening."

The door squeaks open and she is led inside. By the time she realizes that the guards have not accompanied her, the door is closing behind her. The lock panel turns red, and she knows that she will not be going home. As though a part of her knows she will want to remember, she marks this moment as the one when she became aware that she was a prisoner. No matter what John says, they are stuck here.

Three hours later, she has paced the length of her room dozens of times and taken stock of her meager possessions, which consist of a relatively comfortable bed, a vanity, some toys, a small bathroom with its own soaps that she promptly uses to make bubbles in the sink, a few thin books with bright illustrations written for much younger children than she, and a television with recordings of old cartoon movies she's never heard of before. The walls are painted the same industrial gray as everything else, and it smells like laundry and mop water and something else that she cannot name. If she knew the word "despair", she might have associated the smell with that word.

A slot opens in the door and a tray slides through bearing a plate of macaroni and cheese. She takes the food as though it might explode at any moment, and the tray retreats, the slot banging shut. She takes the plate over to the vanity and stares at it for a long moment before getting into an argument with John over who should eat it first just in case it's poisoned. He tells her she's being a baby, but she winds up convincing him to go first. They are unsure of the nature of their bond this early in life, but the basics of how it works are ingrained in them like a genetic memory, something they just know.

Ten minutes and nearly the entire plate of macaroni later, John isn't dead and she feels safe enough to take a bite herself.

After dinner, Doctor Hardwick returns and his friendly mask isn't fooling her at all. She is a specimen to him, a research project, and not a very interesting one at that. He brings in his own folding metal chair and plants it in the middle of the room, motioning for her to sit on the bed. He scans her file for a long time, and her feet swing out into space. She studies her pink sneakers, entertaining herself by bouncing slightly on the mattress while she waits in the uncomfortable silence. She is reminded of her mother's admonitions about strangers and wonders if the doctor would apply to that rule. Maybe she should ignore him.

"All right, let's get started," he says, huffing a sigh. He takes out a mini recorder and places it on the vanity, turning it so the microphone is pointed out into the room to catch their voices. "Doctor Hardwick of Site 25 performing a psychiatric evaluation on SCP-4762. Please state your name."

She stares at her shoes. Her feet continue to move in shallow arcs above the blue carpet.

"Can you say your name into the microphone, please?" he asks again. She says nothing. "What about your address? Where are you from?"

Kick, kick, kick. Pink sneakers rising and falling. Mommy said 'don't talk to strangers,' and Jane thinks there can be nothing stranger than this.

"Do you remember anything about the fall, or what happened afterward?"

She stops kicking, her feet below her field of vision.

"You were dead for five minutes and twelve seconds, if the eyewitness reports are correct. What was that like?"

She covers her face with her hands and hums atonally. _Go away, go away, go away._

"Jane, you need to answer my questions. If you do, I'll bring you dessert. Maybe pudding, do you like pudding?" he asks in a cloyingly sweet, wheedling tone.

She hums louder and starts rocking back and forth. "Go away, go away," she mumbles.

"What was that?"

"Go away! Go away, _go away!_" The last word turns into a sustained scream and she hates the tears that run down her face to pool in the creases of her cupped hands. Doctor Hardwick looks down at her in disgust and stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind him. It isn't until the lights go out in her room signaling bed time that she dares to remove her hands. There is a dim night light in the wall, an unexpected courtesy in this place that seems totally devoid of human warmth and comfort. She wonders what she did that was so wrong. She wonders if she should have just stayed dead.

It is their first night away from their mother, in a strange place, without Ama, and in the darkness of their cell, John and Jane both cry themselves to sleep.

OoOoOoO

_Three months later_:

At first, the changes that come over the guards are written off as a normal reaction to having to work with a child of her age. She has come out of her shell somewhat and she is a charismatic and energetic girl of six (almost seven, she reminds everyone who will listen; it is her birthday next month). Soon, there are guards sneaking her dolls and cookies, smiling at her in the hallways as she is taken for testing. She affects everyone except Doctor Hardwick who, for some reason, she has put permanently on the do-not-trust list.

It isn't until the first time a guard tries to hit the doctor over a less than favorable comment about Jane that anyone realizes there may be another characteristic they've missed. Doctor Clef is summoned to Site 25 two days later, and Doctor Hardwick takes on an assistant as a sort of buffer zone between himself and Jane's guards, who have very nearly become more hers than the Foundation's.

After a short interview, Clef emerges from her cell and informs everyone present, "She's not a reality shifter, but she definitely has some pull. That could just be chalked up to her natural disposition—she's got quite the personality for a child her age—but there could be something else at work here. Keep an eye on her guards, and if any of them try anything," he says, looking at them pointedly, "have them reassigned to 682 detail. In the meantime, I'll have her upgraded to Euclid." He patted Hardwick's shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. "I wouldn't worry about it too much."

"Thank you, Alto. Your expertise in this matter has been most helpful."

"Don't hesitate to call if you need anything else. I'll send someone over this afternoon to speak to her some more, if you don't mind."

"Not at all."

Clef turned to leave, surreptitiously wiping the hand that had touched the doctor on the legs of his trousers, scowling darkly.

When the guards at the facility's entrance call to tell him that there's someone who wishes to visit Jane, he ushers the guest in with great curiosity. There is the subtle whining of hydraulic pistons and servo motors that precedes the man, and Doctor Hardwick finds himself looking at SCP-172. His black hair holds the tracks from his comb, and his equally black moustache is waxed and groomed with precision. His dark eyes regard the doctor distantly, and he can almost hear the clicking of his robotic eyelids. There is a large ornate key hanging from a thin chain around his neck.

"Good afternoon," 172 says politely. "I am here to see your newest acquisition, 4762. Alto said she is called 'Jane'."

"Yes of course, right this way," Hardwick says, making a mental note to call Clef the moment he returns to his office. Mixing of SCPs has never been a good idea in his experience, but Clef is a senior researcher by several hundred years and has always had the ear of the O5s. He has a guard unlock Jane's cell and the Gearman enters with a nod of thanks, pulling the door closed behind him. Seconds later, the video feed from her room goes blank and for upwards of twenty minutes there is no official record.

Jane watches as the stranger disables the camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling. She's holding a toy robot she was using to lay waste to a city of terrified Barbies and stares in suspicious curiosity as the man lowers himself to the floor, the gears in his knees whirring as he crosses his legs Indian-fashion. He is wearing a warm smile, and she finds herself responding despite herself. She has a feeling about people, and this man strikes her as someone she can put in the "good guy" category.

"What are you playing?" he asks.

"War. I got a new truck and it doesn't like the Barbies, so it got the other robots on its side to make the doll-city 'splode."

"Oh, that sounds like fun. Do you mind if I play?"

She raises one eyebrow in disbelief (what grown-up wants to play dolls with a kid?) until she realizes this man isn't kidding. "Okay, yeah. You be the robots, and you try to beat me. Whoever has the most guys at the end wins."

They play for a few minutes, and by the end of it the dolls have won the war. He doesn't let her win either; he plays fair, and announces his surrender when there are only two robots remaining. They are putting the toys away when he asks, "Do you know why I am here?"

She thinks for a moment before answering. "Because Doctor Hardwick thinks there's something wrong with me."

"You may be right about that," he agrees. "But the reason I am here is because there is someone in the Foundation who thinks you are a very special girl. Tell me, Jane, are you strong and brave?"

"Yeah," she says proudly. She's picked up a snake before, and punched a boy in the face for calling her friend names. All the kids at school knew she was strong and brave.

"I'm sure you are. You'd have to be brave to live here." He leans closer and Jane does the same, almost unconsciously. "Do you think you would talk to me again if I came back to play with you sometimes?"

"I guess." She doesn't tell him how much she really wants him to stay here all the time; she spends so much time alone with her toys and her videos that sometimes all she wants to do is scream until she can't think anymore. She may have already done so if not for John; they have been each other's saving grace. "You talk like a doctor, but you're not like the other one."

"Do you mean Doctor Hardwick?" She nods and looks away, afraid she might get into trouble for telling on the doctor. "Can I tell you a secret?" he asks. That gets her attention, and when she meets his eyes she finds them warm and accepting. "I used to be a doctor, too. A long time ago."

"Really?" she asks reverentially. She is being entrusted with a secret, and treats it with the gravitas it deserves.

"Yes. I used to work here, sometimes with children much like you, Jane. And do you know what?"

"What?"

"You're one of my favorites." She grins, a broad gap-toothed smile. He stands to leave, and bends down to shake her hand. "It was very nice to meet you, Jane."

"Nice to meet you too, Doctor—"

"Gears. Call me Doctor Gears."

* * *

_AN about the characters: This update contains SCP-172, the Gearman and Doctor Gears. I'm messing with SCP canon (such as it is) here just to be able to put Gears into the story, since I love his character so much and wanted him to have some interaction with Shepard. Basically what happened is that Gears ended up working with 172 and found out that it's not only an elaborate machine but a soul-trap of sorts. He winds up making an arrangement to enter the robotic body of 172, thereby freeing the previous occupant and rendering himself almost immortal. He maintains that he is 172 to almost everyone but Clef, who knows the truth._


	11. Questioning

_AN-Sorry to have left you guys hanging for so long, the holidays were insane and this one got away from me for a while. Here's a little progression to tide you over, the big action sequence is coming up really soon. Thanks to all the reviewers, and to everyone following this. Makes me all warm and fuzzy. :) _

* * *

John and Tali landed at the airstrip at around the same time as Jane and Garrus. Rather than wait for Doctor Clef, who John hadn't met in his reality, they opted to get their own wheeled transport (which was still the best way to get through the few remaining heavily wooded areas of Earth). A few minutes of searching and a quick rewiring job later and they were on their way in a truck that was made to resemble the ancient pickups of the early part of the century.

"Your people drive these things often?" Tali couldn't help remarking as they jounced around after hitting a pothole in the dirt road. John was trying to concentrate on following Clef's path as Jane was experiencing it, and couldn't split his attention well enough to avoid the bumps.

"Yeah, Earth used to be covered with them."

"There's no auto-pilot." She was trying so hard not to disparage his species, bless her, but the quarians had been a space-faring race since before humans had managed to yank themselves out of the Bronze Age.

"Look, I know that compared to the rest of the galaxy, humans are way behind on our technology. It's not so obvious in Council space; we got a lot of help from a lot of different species to get where we are today, whether the Alliance wants to acknowledge it or not. Here on Earth, though, that's another story. Most of the people here are descendants of the working Joes who couldn't afford to move to Arcturus when it was first built. There are still a lot of cars here that run on fossil fuels."

It was during times like this John realized just how much they still had to learn about each other, and how little was known about Earth, which existed in a sort of time capsule of a bygone era that incorporated some elements of humans' new galactic status but never really transitioned much beyond that. He'd never really thought about it before, but there were no other species on his homeworld at all. They got visitors sometimes, but that was an extraordinarily rare occasion, as most of the intergalactic politicking went on at Arcturus, the official capitol of the Alliance. The subtle miasma of jittery anxiety (which Tali had felt as well, enough that she remarked on it) that wreathed Earth, and possibly the entire Sol system if the voice on Neptune was any indication, must have been keeping would-be visitors and trespassers alike away.

"I didn't mean to offend, Shepard."

"I know," he answered with a sigh as he double-checked the route. He thought they were getting close, but it was hard to tell in the dark with just the narrow beams of the headlights spear-heading their way on the narrow dirt road.

"I can almost see why Cerberus would fight so hard for human advancement," Tali said, surprising the hell out of John with her lack of vehemence where his new boss was concerned. "There's . . . not exactly a lot of it."

"Honestly, I can't say I blame them either. If it's true that Earth is the only planet with anomalies like the ones contained by the Foundation, and if even half the stories I've heard about the objects they keep are true, the galaxy needs humans to survive. I know it sounds egotistical as hell, but I'm serious—some of the things in the Foundation could destroy everything, and not just the obvious ones."

"For example . . . ?" she prompted.

"There's a self-replicating cake that creates a copy of itself every day unless someone eats it."

Tali giggled. "You're having me on."

"No, really. I know it sounds ridiculous, but think about it—one cake becomes two, and then four, and then eight, and so on. Eventually you'd have too many to eat and it would get out of control. It wouldn't take more than three or four months to render the entire planet uninhabitable."

She went quiet as she absorbed the implications of that. "Keelah. You're serious?"

"I never saw it for myself, but there were a few guards I met who told me they'd been on cake-duty before. I believed them." John knew that the Illusive Man was aware of the Foundation and his own file with them. Maybe he was trying so hard to preserve humanity because of the SCPs, and what would happen if humans weren't around to contain them anymore. The galaxy needed Earth far more than they realized . . . and he hoped they never did. The powers-that-be might decide that a full-scale evacuation followed by a very big bomb would be in order, and that would just piss off some of the most dangerous SCPs.

He pulled the truck over and waited to see just how close they were, watching Jane's perspective in his mind's eye. It took about eight minutes for them to reach the gatehouse, which hopefully put John and Tali outside their observable perimeter. He maneuvered the truck as far off the road as he could, then the two of them proceeded on foot through the woods. He had Tali blank her face mask to get rid of the glow, and she moved off a few yards before proceeding through the thick undergrowth parallel to his path.

So engrossed was she in trying to mirror John, stay quiet, and keep anything from puncturing her suit that she almost missed the movement at the very edge of her field of vision. She cursed her helmet for what had to have been the billionth time for halving her peripheral vision and activated the scanning feature that acted much like Garrus' visor did, giving her a readout on the inside of her mask that was invisible on the outside. The infrared scans showed a hulking figure just ahead to her three o'clock, standing still and watching her intently. There was no question that it had noticed her; she saw its head turn to follow her as she walked. Just as she was about to say something about it to John, a cold pressure closed over her mouth and sealed it shut.

Nothing had touched her through her suit in years. Nothing. So the feeling of something on her skin, even the freezing cold presence over the lower half of her face, shocked her motionless. The large figure currently glowing red on her mask's readout closed in, moving silently, and as it neared she could just make out the brown hair covering its body, the leaves and small twigs knotted in it. She tried to back up, but bumped into something solid. It had some give but not much, and as she fought it the chilly thing pressed harder over her mouth.

The hairy creature bent over her, its face filling her mask. She wished she could turn off the infrared to get a better look at it, but from what she could see it had a face that was more human than animal, and it had large inquisitive eyes. The glowing readout didn't leave much room for interpretation, but the lines of its face suggested that it wasn't hostile. Either that, or its features weren't as easily definable as John's and she was about to be killed in the twilight gloom of some remote Earth forest.

Really, not the strangest death she'd ever been faced with, or even the most imminent for that matter.

"You, girl," it said in a soft but gravelly voice. "You look for the bad place?"

She tried to answer, but could only make muffled vowel sounds.

"I believe we can safely assume she's with John," said a low voice behind her. She didn't recognize it, but its cadence suggested a human male. "Nod if I'm right." She did, and could feel a tiny valley in the otherwise solid pressure on her mouth—fingers. Somehow, there was a hand on her face that had passed through her mask. Tali would have said that was impossible, but that was before she knew about the Apocalypse Cake.

"Black-wing man will help you inside. We help you outside." The giant waved his hand at the trees, and she could see maybe eight more figures of similar build in the distance.

"By now, the guards will have found John, and are taking him into the facility." Tali made some panicked humming noises and struggled against her captor until she gave up—the bastard was strong, and her lips were starting to go numb. "If you want to get him back, along with the package you've come to collect, you'll have to trust me." She scoffed as best she could and felt the man behind her laugh. "At least trust that you'll never get him out without my help. The Foundation is remarkably protective of its acquisitions, and your commander is no different than any of the other skips housed in that facility. Now, I'm going to take my hand off your mouth. _Do not_ scream, or I'll rip the seals off your suit." She nodded, and a second later the ghost hand was gone. She turned to look at him and had to stifle a gasp.

Behind him, stretching up over his head and out to the sides, were dark-energy wings.

* * *

John groaned and turned his face into the pillow. Light . . . too much light, even through the red filter of his eyelids. There was a soft shuffling a few feet away, but he couldn't think of why this was significant through the stabbing pain in his head. He'd been in the shuttle and driving down the road toward . . . something . . .

The facility.

Tali.

At the thought of Tali, he was up like a shot and very nearly collapsed again as gray shadows folded over his eyes and he swayed, lightheaded and dizzy.

"Whoa, whoa, John," said an unfamiliar voice, and a warm hand, heavier and more solid than a normal human hand, gripped his bicep to steady him. He cracked his eyelids and saw a man there, roughly his height and build with tanned skin and black hair. There was a strange runic symbol carved into his forehead. John pulled away, not hard enough to dislodge himself but the man let him go. "Steady now. You took quite a hit out there. The guards may have been a bit over-enthusiastic tonight."

"Yeah, no kidding. Where's Tali?"

"Tali?" the man asked, genuinely confused. So they hadn't found her. The surge of relief unhinged his knees and he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, jarring his head again. He clutched his pounding temples and shut his eyes tightly against the light. The pain was fading already, but not nearly fast enough to suit him.

"Never mind, Cain," said another voice, just off to his left. That was a voice he knew, complete with the trademark clicks and whirrs only just audible beneath the soothing tenor. "Give him time to adjust."

"Doc—uh, Gearman. Nice to see you up and about," John said, and he really meant it. Of the few people he knew within the Foundation, Gears was one that he missed. The Doctor had always treated him well.

"Don't worry, John," said the doctor, somewhat bemusedly. "The Foundation knows about me now—no need for secrecy."

"Oh, well that's out of the way, then." He hauled his head, which felt as though it was trying to contain a wad of rising dough that would come bursting out his ears at any moment, out of his hands to regard the other man in the room. "I know Gears, but I don't believe I've met you before."

"I am Cain," he said, extending his hand. John shook it and thought that if this was Cain, he'd better damn well be worth putting his crew in danger for. "I am here as Doctor Gears' assistant, and to give him aid where he needs it."

"Yeah, okay. Mind telling me what the hell is going on? What are they planning to do with me?"

"First, a few questions. What were you doing out in the woods, and with so many guns?"

John straightened up as best he could, his face a cold mask. Gears looked back, meeting his eyes with the same affably inquisitive look he'd worn back when John was still an inmate here.

_Aren't I an inmate again, though? I mean, here I am, after all._ The thought was not a comforting one. If the Foundation was intent on keeping him this time they'd have to try a little harder, but they were nothing if not adaptable. He probably warranted an upgrade to Keter-class now, based on how many people he'd killed over the years, and the containment protocols for Keters were much more stringent. They'd take into account his new upgrades and implants—

Yes, he had brand spandy-new biotic implants this time around. That could really come in handy. He was already working out a plan when he realized he hadn't answered Gears' question.

"Sorry, Doc, but you won't get anything out of me this time. Not when I've got people out there counting on me."

"Are you referring to the Collectors' efforts to eradicate the outer colonies?"

"I'm surprised that you're so well informed."

"That was not an answer."

"Yeah. How 'bout that?"

"The SCP Foundation has always held a vested interest in humanity, John." Gears arched an eyebrow at him and leaned forward a fraction of an inch. Just enough for John to see it. "Surely you remember that much."

John said nothing.

"I ask again—what were you doing in the woods?"

* * *

"Garrus Vakarian, turian. Citadel ID number Delta-647-Tango-0923."

"Yes, we gathered as much, Mister Vakarian—"

"_Officer._ Gunnery Officer Vakarian."

"Apologies, Officer Vakarian. What is the name of the ship to which you are assigned?" asked the agent assigned to interrogate him in a nasally voice.

"The SSV Normandy."

"And what were you and Jane—"

"Commander Shepard_,_" he corrected.

The agent gave a put-upon sigh and restarted. Again. "What were you and Commander Shepard planning to do here?"

Garrus stared at the wall and didn't speak.

"Are you a member of the Church of the Broken God?" Silence. "The Global Occult Coalition, maybe?" Nothing. The agent leaned in close and asked, "Were you planning to steal one of the SCPs, Officer Vakarian?"

"Garrus Vakarian, turian. Citadel ID number Delta-647-Tango-0923." He turned his head and regarded the agent with a flat, emotionless gaze. "Your breath smells like varren shit, by the way. Anyone ever tell you that?"

* * *

"What were you planning to do, Jane?" Agent Andrew Connelly asked. Gerald, the little pissant, was standing behind him and to the side looking very pleased with himself. Jane couldn't wait to knock that smug little smile right off his acne-scarred face. "Break in, maybe steal one of the SCPs? You should know better than anyone how dangerous that would be."

"You see, Andrew—may I call you Andrew?"

"My name is Agent Connelly."

"Right. Now, Andrew, you may now know this, but I haven't always worked for Cerberus. Before I suffocated and then burned to shit whilst falling through the atmosphere of an ice planet called Alchera, I was in the Alliance."

"I have your file right here, Jane—"

"I wasn't finished. When I was in the Alliance, I was what's called an N7 operative. Do you know what that means?"

"We have detailed records of your training—"

"It means, _Andrew_, that I have been taught by the finest soldiers humanity has to offer how to withstand interrogations. It means, _Andrew_, that no matter how many times you ask me that question, you'll get no answer from me." She leaned forward as far as her handcuffs would let her. "But I might answer those questions if someone else were asking them. Someone like the Gearman, for instance? If you have my file, I imagine you know that 172 and I have something of a history. Go get him, and you might just get your answers." She slumped back in her chair and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. "Or don't. It's really no skin off my ass either way."

It took another hour for Agent Andrew Connelly to admit defeat and summon Doctor Gears.

* * *

_AN-SCP referenced: 871, The Self-Replacing Cake. _


	12. Prison Break, part one

"That's a nice shotgun, by the way," Clef said to Tali as they neared the facility entrance.

"Thanks. Are you going to tell me about your brilliant plan, or do I have to guess?"

"It's not so much a plan as it is a 'let's throw a monkey wrench in the works and see what happens.' Lots of variables, lots of pieces to put into play, and not a lot of time to get it done." He grabbed her wrist and started punching in coordinates and codes to her omnitool, downloading a map of the interior and marking out all the major checkpoints. "We're here," he said, indicating the pulsing orange dot at the western edge of the schematic, "and John is here, in the south near the research wing. I've put out an advisory that all personnel should remain in or near their quarters—we do random checks here all the time, they won't question it." He shot his cuffs and checked his watch. "You'll have three or four minutes to find John before everything starts, and then another ten to get him and Cain and get out. Any longer than that, and you'll risk being caught out when the containment teams arrive."

"Containment teams? What exactly do you plan on doing, Clef?"

"Nothing much," he said with a grin that was disconcertingly wide. Tali thought for a minute that his lips would just keep stretching to his ears until they split his head in half. "Just gonna raise a little hell."

* * *

"John . . . this doesn't have to be difficult," Gears was saying. Cain stood with his hands clasped loosely in front of him, watching the exchange.

"If it was just you and me, I'd tell you the whole story. Hell, I'd fill you in on all the crazy shit I've been through these past couple years, but you're with the Foundation."

"I've been with the Foundation longer than most of the staff, and that's really saying something."

"But when you and I were acquainted, you were a skip like me. At least, everyone thought you were. Now, though . . ." John tsked and shook his head. "Now, you're working for them. Shiny new badge and everything."

The Doctor sighed and stood, beckoning to Cain. "Come on, then. I don't think we'll be getting anything out of him tonight. Maybe we'll give him some time to think about his predicament." Cain gave a little bow and followed Gears from the room. The door clanged shut and the bolt slid into place with a whispery brush of metal against metal. The silence that descended filled his head and he looked around, clocking all the minute details he might have missed during his imprisonment. It didn't matter any more now than it did then—he was locked in, and there would be no getting out again until someone let him out. He tried not to think about what Tali was doing right now; the panic that closed in on his heart would be of no use to him when his chance at freedom presented itself.

His eyes landed on the folder on the floor beside the folding chair Gears had been sitting in—John's file. As he flipped through the thick sheaf of pages, moments from his past jumped up at him. The entries read a bit like Mordin's stilted speech.

_"Subject appears to be able to regrow any flesh removed during death state."_

"_Relationship between 4762 and 076 progressing well. Appears that there may be some truth to Dr. Alto Clef's claims that 4762 may be a type green, or 'reality shifter'."_

"_Analysis of flesh taken from subject indicates rapid cell regeneration. May be something marketable here."_

"_O5s have begun looking into Taskforce Omega-7, and possible reasons for its failure. Control of Able has been impossible in the past; perhaps the inclusion of 4762 would be the key."_

He'd suspected they were trying to militarize his abilities, and that Able had to fit into that somehow, but to see it all written out in black and white was another matter entirely. For twelve years, he'd been manipulated, used, and tortured by the Foundation. Gears had said that they didn't always operate with such brutality, that at one time they had been a much more compassionate research facility interested merely in containment of dangerous SCPs. In those days, John might have been released under observation, but for some reason the Foundation's objectives had become skewed. Maybe there was a change in human behavior along the line, maybe there was someone up the chain of command who had gone a little screwy. All John knew was that the way he'd been treated had been monstrous, and that part of his nature could be chalked up to growing up within these four walls. He had become the Butcher of Torfan, after all. Him and Jane, both.

About midway through the file he stopped, convinced that his eyes had to be deceiving him. He was tired and worried about Tali and there was no way—

But there it was, clear as day in the corner of one of the older documents: a golden hexagon flanked on either side with half-outlines of the same shape. The Cerberus logo, right there on a twenty-year-old medical report. Before he could begin to wonder at the implications of this find, the lights went out.

* * *

"What in the actual fuck . . ."

Gears, after maybe thirty minutes of unproductive back-and-forth, had gone and left the file he'd been carrying. At first she hadn't wanted to look at it, but as the silence stretched out, curiosity got the better of her and she started flipping through it. The Cerberus logo jumped out at her almost immediately and she stopped cold, staring at the paper. Another thread added to the tapestry spooling out before her and behind her that encompassed everyone she knew, and she couldn't help but feel as though she were caught in a web while a giant spider waited to wrap her up in it.

She ran the tip of her finger over the gold-printed symbol, tracing the slightly raised edges, when the room suddenly went pitch-black. Her heart jumped into her throat as she flipped through her mental directory of what might have the capability to do something like this. But if anything had broken free, there should be—

_"Alert: level three containment breach. Lockdown initiated. Ten minutes to code blue."_

She wasn't familiar with all of the Foundation's containment protocols, but she knew what a code blue meant—something had escaped from the Keter wing. If it wasn't returned to its cell within ten minutes, the spec ops teams would arrive to handle the situation.

In the blackness of the interrogation room, she could hear the lock sliding back followed by the thick door swinging open. Jane stood up as silently as she could and started backing toward the wall, straining to see anything in the darkness. She could hear it breathing, whatever it was. There was a tiny click and suddenly the room exploded with light and she cried out, shielding her eyes. The thing laughed and the light shifted to the floor, and she looked up to see the intruder.

"Hello, Jane," Clef said. "Fancy meeting you here."

Her hands clenched into fists seemingly of their own volition, and she hurled a punch at the traitorous bastard's face. She hadn't really expected it to connect, but there was a muffled crack when it did and Clef reeled back, blood pouring from his split lip.

"Well, that was uncalled for."

"You sold us out, you fucking—"

"I got you in, as promised. And now," he said, tossing a flashlight and a loaded Kessler her way, "I'm here to get you out."

She checked the weapon over and saw that it was one of hers. "And Garrus."

"What was that?"

"You heard me. We're taking Garrus, too." Never hurt to clarify where Clef was concerned.

"Yes, yes, of course we are. Now come on and stay close—there are some nasty things about, as I'm sure you've heard." He started out into the hallway and Jane followed.

"You mean that wasn't just a false alarm?" she asked. If there were Keter-class SCPs between them and the exit—

Clef looked back over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. "Well, yeah. False alarms aren't nearly as much fun as the real thing."

Jane shook her head and started working on the lock to the adjacent room where she thought Garrus had to be. "You're insane, do you know that?"

"Nobody's perfect. Now hurry up before we all get eaten."

Shepard unlocked the door—a relatively easy feat since these rooms were meant to keep people in rather than out—and called out to Garrus to prevent being surprised by a talon in the face. It was a good thing, too; he was poised for combat just inside the door. She handed him her gun and he raised a brow plate at her.

"Don't shoot anything unless you absolutely have to," she instructed him, calling over her shoulder as she went back into the other room to retrieve her file. She rolled it up and tucked it into her waistband for safe-keeping. "I mean it. Keep the safety on and don't fire at anything that isn't actively trying to kill you."

"Yes, ma'am." He aimed the pistol at the floor and started to take the flank like he usually did, but she repositioned him between herself and Clef before moving out into the corridor. She felt so naked without her armor on and missed the weight of her guns at her back, but this wasn't going to be a firefight. If it came to the point where they needed guns, it would be too late for them anyway. The lack of protection was making Garrus, who looked so much less substantial without all that bulky metal, very antsy as well.

Caged lights in the walls strobed red and the overhead fluorescents threw everything into stark relief, illuminating every corner. Jane heard the pounding of boots in an adjacent hallway heading off into the Keter wing followed by a man shouting orders at his team then, a few seconds later, terrified screams punctuated by loud cracking sounds. Garrus tried to look everywhere at once for the source of the threat, but the long unbroken stretch of hallway gave no sign.

Their luck held until they reached the first turn when Jane was suddenly frozen to the spot. Her blood felt like it had been replaced with ice water and her mind went blank with gibbering panic, but there was no threat to be seen. Behind her, Garrus had stopped as well and was making a low sustained moan. Jane pushed against the wall, trying to melt into it and get away from the horrible twisting in her guts, and fumbled back toward Garrus. He took her hand in his, his fingers cold even through his gloves.

"Just hang tight, it'll pass," Clef whispered, high and pinched, his breath coming fast and shallow. Just before the overheads flickered and went out, dousing the facility in darkness except for the strobing red emergency lighting, a shape appeared at the small square window of the cell door across from them. It was an emaciated skin-covered skull with a mouth so large it would have been comical were it not grinning a horrific Cheshire cat grin through the reinforced glass. It made a high-pitched wheezing noise that shouldn't have been audible through the thick door, but Jane could hear it anyway.

The thing wormed its way into her head and she could _see_ it, the reddish-brown mummified skin wrapped tightly over its misshapen skeleton. She tried to move away, but her feet were rooted to the spot. It might have been minutes or hours later that the thing finally retreated and the terror lifted from them enough that they could start moving again. Garrus stayed so close to her after that she worried he might trip over her heels.

They turned right and went carefully down the next hall, this one broken by cell doors on either side. According to the map Clef sent her, they'd have to pass right by the Keter wing to get to Cain's cell and then make a break for the exit.

Seven minutes to go.

* * *

Tali knelt by the cell door, indistinguishable from the others on this hall except for a placard with the label "SCP-073" in raised letters. The locks were of the old-fashioned variety with bolts and tumblers, but she was the mechanical genius who kept the _Normandy_ running; picking a lock was a pain in the ass compared to hacking, but she managed the task in record time despite her shaking hands.

"John?" she called as she pushed the door open. "Are you in here?" She heard him exhale and he came around the door holding a metal chair, folded flat, by the legs.

"Tali," he said, touching the side of her helmet. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Were you expecting company?" she asked, indicating the chair.

"Yeah, well, you know . . . have to use what you've got." It fell to the floor with a bang and he followed her out into the hall. She drew her shotgun and handed him a pistol, which he took gratefully. "Try not to shoot unless you have to. We need to get out undetected; no unnecessary noise."

"Got it."

John took point and Tali kept a watch on their flank as they moved, straining their ears for any sign of something closing in on them. "How did you know where to find me?" he asked.

"Doctor Clef gave me your coordinates, and a map of the facility."

"You met Clef? Did he say what he was planning to do?"

"I believe his words were, 'raise a little hell'."

"Crap. This could be really bad." They reached the first turn and Tali pointed to the right, and the fluorescents went black just as they reached an intersection. There was a snuffling sound coming from the corridor on the left and they inched down the wall with their weapons at the ready. John leaned around the corner and saw a pale white creature with freakishly long limbs crouched in the corner with its hands over its face. It was rocking back and forth, sniffing wetly as though it was crying. He leaned back against the wall and was just gearing up to pass the thing by when he heard booted feet thudding, dangerously close. He pushed Tali back a few feet and put his finger over his lips. She nodded and they waited for the guards to pass.

Flashlight beams bounced like will-o-the-wisps on the walls as the guards came closer and John was just about to tell Tali to start running when someone yelled, "Oh shit! Don't look at it, guys, don't look at its face!"

"What is th—"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

From around the corner came an echoing wail of despair. The guards' panicked shouts were drowned out by an inhuman screech from the creature, and a white blur was all John saw before gunfire rattled through the enclosed space and punched holes in the wall near John's shoulder, little puffs of disintegrated plaster filling the air. He motioned to Tali and they ran across the hall as silently as possible, averting their eyes from the thing's face. They'd made it a good distance toward the Keter wing when Tali's shriek stopped John in his tracks. He wheeled around to see her standing in front of an open cell, a thick glistening rope wrapped around her neck. Her shotgun hung from limp fingers and she was making sounds that were trying to be petrified screams, but in her fear she couldn't get enough air into her lungs.

The rope went slack as a severed head with a tangled mass of internal organs depending from the bloodless stump of its neck floated into the hall. The rope was a prehensile length of small intestine that coiled around Tali's neck, digging into her veil. Long black hair flowed from its head and it snaked its grotesquely long tongue out to lap at the air. Its eyes were black and dead and empty.

John raced back to her and reached out to unwind the intestine from her, but it turned suddenly and hissed at him, showing off its (_her, oh god, it's female_) needle-like fangs. He aimed his gun at its temple but Tali raised her hand to stop him.

"Don't," she whispered. "I think it . . ." She cut off when another appendage, this one not as easily recognizable, stretched out and prodded Tali's abdomen. With another hiss, this one sounding suspiciously like frustration, the fleshy rope loosened and fell away from her and the disembodied head floated away, its hanging organs dragging along the wall.

Tali collapsed to her knees and clutched her chest. "Keelah, Shepard, what _was_ that thing?"

"I don't know, but I don't want to be here if it comes back. Come on, let's get the hell out of here." He helped her to her feet and they rounded the corner toward the door marked "Authorized Personnel Only."

Six minutes.

* * *

They cut through the rooms set aside for the staff—break rooms, offices, dormitories, and rooms full of surveillance equipment. In here, there were no red strobe lights so they had to rely solely on their flashlights, the thin beams cutting through the darkness. Everyone was out trying to secure the escaped SCPs, so it seemed they had the place to themselves. Jane hurried over to a terminal under a bank of vid screens showing various parts of the facility. She pulled up a map of their route and started checking the feeds for any obstacles in their way while Garrus looked on over her shoulder.

"I'm beginning to see how you can handle yourself in stressful situations," he said.

"What do you mean?" The route they'd originally planned to take wasn't going to work anymore; one whole hallway was covered in a fleshy, pulsating substance and was spreading to cover all uninfected surfaces. There were some lumps on the floor that looked vaguely human, along with a rifle that was being covered by long tendrils of the flesh as she watched.

"You grew up here, in this place, surrounded by these . . . things. You must have been scared a lot of the time, and gotten used to it."

She sighed and shook her head. "You never really get used to being afraid all the time, but I developed certain coping mechanisms that help me work through it. If I didn't, I'd have spent most of my day curled up in the fetal position."

"But you didn't. That kind of resilience isn't exactly typical, Shepard."

"You're holding up fine, considering the circumstances."

"That's the thing. I'm not." She turned around and started to say something but Clef chose that moment to step up next to her.

"So, find anything yet?"

"I'm working on it. You know, this would have been a lot easier if you'd, say, just set off the fire alarms or something."

"We're still alive, aren't we? Oh, we can't go that way."

"Why not?"

"That's the viral ward. Don't want to get free just to unleash the zombie plague on the galaxy, do we?"

Jane's hands ached to hold a gun, preferably to jam it into Clef's ear. "Wanna remind me again why releasing the Keters was a good idea? Because I'm having a really hard time seeing it right now."

"You're a Euclid-class skip, Jane, and so is Cain. I had to get the guards aiming at things more dangerous than you until we get out of here, and nothing short of 682 was going to get that done. They're very serious about their jobs, but with everything that's out there, they'll likely just write us off and let us go."

"I'm sensing an ulterior motive."

Clef just smiled a secretive smile and watched the flickering images on the screens. "I thrive on chaos, and the fact that this makes the Foundation head look _really_ bad isn't exactly small potatoes, either."

"Aren't they going to bring the hammer down on you, too? They have to know you were involved."

"No, all I had to do was put a little nick in the Old Man's container which will never show up in an investigation, given what he can do. It won't be traced back to me, but they've suspected I'm involved with the GOC for a while now. My time here may be over, at least for now."

The feed changed again to show a room in the eastern part of the facility. There was a thin old woman in a long gray shift standing in the middle with thin hair-like strands, like webbing, extending from her body to every corner of the room. Her mouth and the front of her gown was covered in blood; it dripped thickly from her fingers.

"What's the GOC?" Garrus asked.

"Global Occult Coalition. They're sort of like the SCP Foundation, but more concerned with destruction rather than containment of anomalous artifacts."

"Can't say I disagree with that," said Jane. "So, are you?"

"Sometimes," he said softly, his eyes far away.

"Wait a minute," Jane said, her eyes widening. "You said you broke the Old Man out of containment?"

"Yep. Don't worry, though, he's not very fast."

It was like a scene out of a bad horror movie; as soon as the words left his mouth, there was a bang from behind them and the door dented inward. Garrus aimed into the darkened crack that had opened up but couldn't see anything to shoot. The metal started to corrode as rust bloomed over its warped surface and the hinges disintegrated. Garrus went to shove a desk in front of the doorway, but Clef grabbed him by the back of his cowl and yanked him back just before the tiled floor turned yellow and cracked, the edges peeling up from the floor. The foundation beneath began to crumble and collapse, and the decay spread toward them at an alarming rate.

"Shepard, we need to go."

"Hang on, I need to find a clear route." She flipped through the feeds and found a path that was relatively hazard-free except for one thing—a figure that stood still as a statue about halfway down the hall. It had a huge rounded head and stunted limbs attached to a doll-like body. Its face looked like it was covered in spray paint and its huge bulging green eyes stared unseeing at the wall. It was the one skip that everyone knew, the first one ever contained by the Foundation.

SCP-173, standing right between them and the exit.

Crap.

"Shepard!" Garrus shouted and pulled her away from the screens just as the floor gave out and the furniture followed the chucks of crumbling concrete into the void below. They ran out the door and into the Keter wing with the Old Man at their backs and monsters in front of them.

Four minutes.

* * *

"Where are they?" Able asked no one. His voice echoed in the vast space, as did his muffled footsteps as he paced. "They should have been back hours ago."

"The Commander routinely goes on long missions," said EDI, startling him out of his ruminating. "This one is no exception."

"Listen, machine, I know the man they are with very well. Believe me when I say that if the 'mission' has run over its projected time, it does not bode well for your intrepid commander."

"Your concern has been noted, and your comments forwarded to XO Lawson."

"And while you are doing that, they may all be dead."

"Given recent updates on the commander's biology, it is safe to say that death is only a temporary setback."

"You may believe you are amusing, machine, but I have much invested in their success." _Perhaps all, in truth,_ he thought, and felt a pang of unease. He'd never cared much for humans in all his long life; he had always viewed them as little more than convenient cannon fodder or obstacles, and only very rarely as beings worthy of exchanging words. The little Shepard, though . . . never before had he felt this way about anyone. He understood emotions (inasmuch as he could take advantage of them, that was) and thought he could name the one currently residing in what passed for his heart.

Worry. He was actually worried about whether Shepard was all right. He was certainly worried about what that might mean for him when this was all over.

A thought occurred to him and he stopped pacing. "Machine? . . . EDI?"

"Yes, Able?"

"How high are we?"

"We are approximately 37 kilometers above the surface of Milwaukee, over the SCP facility."

He did some quick calculations and nodded to himself. "Open the doors."

"I cannot do that. Venting of the hangar is an emergency countermeasure reserved for—"

"Just do it," Able growled.

"Is it your intention to rescue the commander?" EDI asked.

"It is."

There was a pause as EDI did some calculations of her own, and then she replied, "If you recall, Commander Shepard ordered me to jettison you from the ship if you damaged it in any way."

Able grinned and rammed his fist into the side of the turbine closest to him and tore out a handful of wiring, leaving a gaping hole spitting sparks at his feet. An alarm blared and the bay doors hummed with a hydraulic whine.

"Warning: emergency venting in progress. All personnel please exit the hangar and prepare for de-pressurization." In a much smaller voice, EDI said, "Good luck."

"I will need it." _Because this is really going to hurt_. The doors cracked open and Able clung to the busted turbine until they had opened wide enough, then let go and was hurled into space. As he fell through the atmosphere, he closed his eyes and went over his calculations again. He wouldn't hit the clearing, but he'd land close enough; he could run fast when the need arose, and there was a very pressing need indeed to get both Shepard and Cain out safely. It was a strange thing; where once he would have thought only of the prize that awaited if the mission succeeded, something had changed. Now he had something to fight for, and he wasn't entirely sure he hated the idea.

Three minutes.

* * *

_AN-SCPs and documents referenced in this part in order of their appearance: _

_Taskforce Omega-7 (an addendum to 076's entry); 303, the Doorman; 096, the Shy Guy; 1060, Penanngalan; 610, The Flesh that Hates; 008, the Zombie Plague; 106, the Old Man; 352, Baba Yaga; the Global Occult Coalition, under groups of interest in the wiki; Incident 239-B and the supplemental report 23-B-192; and 173, the Sculpture (the original SCP). Whoo, that's a lot. :) _


	13. Prison Break, part two

They reached a long flight of stairs that led down into the bowels of the compound and Tali gave directions while John took point and kept an eye out for any more escaped skips. She was bearing up well, but he was worried about what would happen once they were back aboard the ship and had time to process everything that happened.

_If_ they got back to the ship, that was. And no thanks to Doctor Alto I-gotta-make-a-huge- mess-of-everything-because-my-sense-of-fun-is-fucked Clef.

"How close are we, Tali?" he asked. Although he kept his voice down to a whisper, the echoes reverberated off the stained concrete walls. His whole body screamed that they were going the wrong way, they should be going _up_ toward light and normal things and sanity and not down into whatever madhouse awaited them, but Tali confirmed that this was the only path to Gears' office, where the doctor was supposedly waiting for them with Cain.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and John cracked the door just wide enough to see that it opened out onto a large room with a few desks and a bank of three CCTVs against the far wall. They went out into the room and closed the door silently behind them. No more than three steps in, a woman in a white lab coat came in with her nose in a datapad and John and Tali ducked behind a desk just as she looked up and started toward the surveillance monitors. She unclipped a radio from her waistband and sat down, using a joystick to control the cameras.

Tali held up her shotgun and cocked her head in the researcher's direction (_want me to shoot her?_), but John frowned, held up a finger and pointed at his wrist (_just give it a minute, Ms. vas Trigger-Happy_).

Less than a minute later, there was a click and the researcher spoke into the walkie. "Doctor Armena reporting in: we're all clear here, sir."

"_Good. We'll lock down that sector as soon as you get back._"

"Roger that. Armena out." She stood up and made to leave when cold metal pressed against her temple and the walkie was plucked from her hand. To her credit, she didn't whimper or make any sound and surrendered almost immediately. John stepped around so she could see him, the barrel of his gun firmly on her head.

"A—are you the one they're looking for?" she asked, her voice quavering on the last syllable.

"Yes." She drew in a breath and he shoved the gun harder against her. "I don't want to kill you, but if you start making a racket, I will paint the walls with your innards, so help me god." She nodded and swallowed hard. Tali went to the CCTVs and started flipping through the displays, then fired up her omnitool to see what other information she could glean. While she worked, John had Armena sit down on the floor by the wall so they could talk. He hoped she would cooperate; there had been enough death down here already tonight.

"I'm almost done here, Shepard. I've stalled the lockdown processes, but I can't stop the override for long. We have to move fast—we only have a few more minutes until the Mobile Task Force arrives."

"Hear that, Armena? We'll be out of your hair soon enough. Now, I need you to do me a favor. Think you can do that?"

She nodded again, her eyes wide and hopeful that she might actually live through this night.

"Where is Doctor Gears?"

"This is his station—"

"I'm aware of that," John said patiently, but the barrel of the gun never wavered from her head. "I need you to get on the radio and ask for him." Armena nodded, eyeing the gun out of the corner of her eye.

"I can, but they'll know something is wrong, I know it. God, I just started here last week—"

"Look, I know you're scared, and that's okay. If you weren't scared right now, I'd be worried about you. Just do your best, hmm?"

Tali handed over the radio and Armena hesitated before pushing the button. "It's just . . . can you back the gun off a little? You can—you can still point it at me, if you really need to, but it's very distracting." John obliged and aimed down at the floor, giving her a 'hurry up' gesture. She depressed the button and took a deep breath before saying, her voice steady as anything, "Doctor Armena to base: what is the location of Doctor Gears?"

"_Armena, this is base: that is not your concern_."

She held up the radio as if to say, _See? What did you expect?_

"Tell him that his assistant needs to know so he can bypass the lockdown," John instructed.

"Uh, his assistant is here and needs the Doctor's location before he leaves the containment area so he doesn't get cut off when we lock it down."

"_Doctor Armena_," said Gears' even voice, "_if you please, tell my assistant that we are waiting for him next to the Random Door._"

"Thank you, Doctor," Armena replied with a long exhale of relief. "I'll send him over now." She clicked the radio off and handed it back to John, who clipped it to his own waistband.

"You did well. Now one last thing—where is the Random Door?"

"Just follow this hall east until you can't anymore, then turn left. It's the only wooden door on the hall."

Tali appeared at his side, her shotgun held casually by her hip. "All done here, Shepard. We should get moving."

"All right." He nodded to Armena and said, "Stay here for five minutes, then head back to your team. Lock the doors behind us, and keep an eye on those monitors. The MTF'll be here soon, and you can get back to work."

"You're not going to kill me?"

"Not unless you try to be a hero. Are you a hero, Armena?" She shook her head in an emphatic 'no' and tears spilled from her eyes. John almost felt bad for her. They left her there on the floor and heard the lock turn once they were most of the way down the hall.

"We're close," Tali said, following the nav point Clef had marked. "The turning's just up there."

They rounded the corner and found Gears and Cain waiting for them at the intersection. John's shoulders dropped as he let himself relax a bit, and clapped the doctor on the shoulder. "Sorry it took so long."

"Not to worry. We have been busy keeping the way clear. Cain was quite thoroughly entertained." His smile was serene and unconcerned, and for a moment John envied him his lack of emotional response. "The door is nearly half-way through its cycle, so we should be safe from any unpredictably random teleporting, but it could still lead someplace inside the facility. There are enough vehicles within the door's scope of influence that it shouldn't take many tries to link up with one of those doors, but still, we must be cautious."

Gears led the way and the others trailed in his wake. While he opened and shut the door, trying for an exit outside the facility, no one saw the mass of black shadow, thick as smoke, creep down the hallway toward them. It moved slowly, deliberately, the ponderous trek of a creature that knew nothing of haste and was used to biding its time.

The first long tendrils of shadow stretched out, probing the air, and its touch felt like a cold draft. John rubbed the back of his neck, but he was so intent on Gears that he didn't bother to question the sensation. It wasn't until he felt a tugging on his waist that he looked down and found that his midsection was swathed in black, smoky fingers. He cried out and the others whipped around just in time to see John sucked bodily into the shadowy mass. Tali screamed and reached for him, but too late—John was gone. Gears opened the door one last time and a cool, fresh breeze blew through the hall. They'd finally found an exit out of this hell, but Tali wouldn't budge.

"No! I won't leave him!" she cried, searching the blackness for any sign of John. She could hear him calling her, though, as if from the bottom of a well, and started toward the wall of shadow with her heart in her throat.

"You can't go in after him," Gears said, showing a rare concern. "We need to leave now and shut the door behind us—I won't risk another containment breach, especially not for _that_." He tugged at her arm but she tore it from his grasp. Cain watched the exchange with sadness for what he knew she was planning.

"I won't leave him," she said again, stepping slowly toward the murky mass. "Go to the ship and tell them to wait for a few hours. If we don't make it . . ." She was engulfed in darkness before she could tell them what to do if they didn't make it out. Gears sighed and shook his head sadly, then he and Cain went out into the night, shutting the door tight behind them.

Two minutes to MTF arrival.

* * *

Garrus pulled Jane down the hall with Clef pounding behind them, fleeing the Old Man and the rapidly disintegrating structure behind them. He'd gone into autopilot, calling upon his military background as they took turn after turn through dark halls and access tunnels, their feet thudding on concrete or echoing off corrugated metal. He gunned down three guards with hardly a thought and they bypassed a thick patch of rapidly growing vines that grabbed at them and tore holes in their clothes.

"Garrus, goddammit," Jane said, breathing hard, "you have to slow down!"

"No, we have to get what we came here for, and then we have to get the fuck out of here." Jane wrenched out of his grip and when he turned to grab her wrist again she disarmed him and stuffed the gun into the back of her pants. He glared at her but his eyes were wide, his mandibles flickering in barely disguised panic. She stepped around him and took the lead again with a _look_, one that would brook no argument. He held his tongue and took up his place in the middle again while Clef watched the whole exchange with a shit-eating grin on his face. Garrus growled menacingly at him, but held himself in check.

"How close are we, Clef?"

"Should be just around the corner, to the left."

They went forward with more caution this time, and Jane knew Garrus was seething at her back—she could feel his eyes locked on the gun, weighing his chances of getting it back without royally pissing her off—but there wasn't anything she could do about that right now. Now, she needed to focus on getting them all out alive. The emotional decompression could come later, when they walked out of here with all their limbs.

They came to the door marked "SCP-073, Cain" and Clef scanned his ID badge to unlock it. Cain sat on the bed with his hands clasped loosely between his knees and looked up, totally unsurprised, when they came in.

"Ah, Clef," he said in a mellifluous voice tinged with the remnants of a Middle Eastern accent. "I thought all this commotion was your doing."

"Isn't it always?" Cain gave him a wry smile that spoke volumes, all of them incomprehensible to Jane, but Clef's face went serious and he took Cain's hand in his, clutching it tightly. Cain nodded slightly and stood, then followed them out without any more explanation.

"Okay, we're in the home stretch now," Clef said, moving up beside Jane. "Just keep heading west."

They managed to pass through the facility relatively unhindered except for a few remaining guards, who Jane dispatched before they could even draw their weapons, and had just turned down the last hallway before the exit when she jolted to a halt, her stomach jumping up into her throat.

"Shepard, what—" Garrus started.

"Don't. Blink," she hissed through gritted teeth, her eyes wide as dinner plates. SCP-173 stood facing them, its huge bulbous green eyes staring blankly through them.

"It's just a statue," he said, but he wasn't blinking either.

"Then how did it get out here?" She took a tentative step forward, then another, then edged past the sculpture with her eyes locked on it. "Clef, you got it?"

"Got it." Jane blinked the dryness from her eyes and riveted her gaze on the creature again. "What happens when we turn the corner? We can't look at it through a wall, and we can't let it out." She shuddered. "Not this one. I won't leave if it means 173 breaches containment."

"I've got it covered, don't worry," Clef answered as he slid past the statue, grimacing as he brushed against its warm, stony flesh. "Just focus on getting out of here." First Jane, followed by Garrus, and then Cain rounded the corner and there, just in front of her and blessedly close, was the short staircase leading to the exit. She stood at the top of the stairs and listened for a moment, but it was reinforced steel and would give up none of its secrets.

"Clef?" she called. "We need to go, now."

Clef backed up in sight of them, staring at 173. His eyes were getting painfully dry, but he didn't dare blink. "No, _you_ need to go. Get Cain out of here, and get back to the _Normandy_." When Jane started to protest, he held up a hand and shook his head. "Cain," he said, only he pronounced it 'Kah-een'.

"I am here, Alto." Clef said something in another language, a tongue old as the stones, and Cain nodded. "I know. Me, too." He motioned for Jane to open the door, and the three of them stepped into the cool night air, edging toward the dawn.

When the door shut behind them Clef smiled, tipped his hat, and closed his eyes.

One minute.

* * *

Tali moved blindly through the thick black murk and even the readouts on her mask did nothing to clarify the situation. The walls kept jumping around—where there should have been a turn there was wall, where there was supposed to be a flight of stairs was flat floor that was beginning to feel more spongy by the second. She had no idea what she'd walked into, but she had to get to John and get him out of this place before it killed them both.

She turned off the digital display and foundered for a moment in the blackness when the walls fell away altogether and she was left with no bearings at all. The floor felt more like ground now, and she had a moment to wonder if she'd been transported outside before she saw a break in the smoke up ahead. As she emerged into the light, she was just as confused as she'd been before. The land around her was vast and green, trees grew up out of piles of wreck and ruin and stood tall in the rising sun. Below her stretched a wide valley with the remains of some city that was being reclaimed by the earth again.

Earth? She was still on Earth, right?

John stood on the edge of the cliff and stared forlornly down at the city, and when he turned to look at her his face was etched with sadness. "Who are you? I didn't think there was anyone else here."

Tali stopped in her tracks and it took her a moment to get her bearings. "Shepard, what are you talking about? We need to leave right now, come on." She tried to drag him back the way she'd come, but he wouldn't go.

"You look so familiar . . ." He reached out to run his fingers across her face mask and a flicker of recognition darted across his face. "You remind me of someone I used to know, a long time ago."

"Who?"

"A quarian, named Tali." Tears sprang up into his eyes and he turned back to the vista below them. "I miss her."

"Shepard, what—I'm right here. Where do you think I went?"

"She's been dead for years," he continued like he couldn't hear her. "When the Reapers came, she was killed. A few of us survived." He gritted his teeth and the anger and frustration in his voice made her take a step back. "I survived. I always do, that's all I can do. Fucking _survive._ Everyone else dies around me, but I always come out without a scratch. Me and Jane both. I was twenty-four when I stopped aging, did you know that?"

Tali knew it was meant to be a rhetorical question, but she needed him to come back to her. She had no way of knowing if they'd somehow traveled through time and this was all real or if it was an elaborate hallucination, but she had to get him to look at her again. "No, I didn't know."

"All this time I thought I was different, but it turns out I'm exactly like Able. Trapped here, unable to die, to rest . . . oh, god, all I want to do is stop. I hope there isn't a heaven, because that just sounds so goddamn exhausting. Eternal life is something dreamed up by those who don't have it."

The radio at his hip crackled to life and some disembodied voice said, "Base to alpha team, are you—_crackle_—you're never leaving this place alive—_crackle_–port to the Keter wing, and bring Agent Daniels with you—_crackle_—I'll see to that, Tali'Zorah, you both belong to me . . ."

The flat, menacing quality of that other voice, the voice of the void, chilled her to her bones, and even John reacted for a moment. The view flickered for a moment, becoming a plain full of thick smoke and yellow bones, barren earth and carrion birds, and Tali grabbed John's arm. He turned to her with such longing in his eyes, like he'd give anything for this not to be real, but it was all too real for him. This was his hell—living forever while the world and everyone he loved died around him.

"Come with me, Shepard."

"I can't leave now. I promised I'd look after her." He pointed at a pile of stones, meticulously placed in a beautiful swirling pattern. At the head of the pile was her face mask, chipped and ancient, with a tattered piece of purple cloth wrapped around it.

"She's still alive, and I can take you to her, but you have to trust me." She pulled him along with her, trying not to look at the grave (_your grave, Tali_), and he followed with dragging steps.

"Are you sure? She's really alive?" His voice cracked with the hope that clogged his throat and Tali had to fight not to start crying. Maybe later, once they were away from here, but not now where that sinister voice on the radio could hear them.

"Yes, now come on!"

"But, I promised—"

"Would you rather stay here forever mourning me—her—or do you want to do something about it?" she asked, the modulator in her helmet crackling. John nodded and followed her back through the dense fog and they almost immediately got lost. She grabbed his hand in both of hers and dragged him away from that valley of death while the radio on his waistband screamed with static and the despairing howl of the creature in the mist.

Finally, they stumbled back out into the industrial hallways and strobing lights of the SCP facility, and Tali let out a sob of relief. They ran down to the the Random Door and she tore it open, but it only led into another hallway identical to this one. Behind them, the shadow creature was reaching out with its searching tentacles and John cringed against the wall while Tali desperately tried to link up with an exit. Every time she closed and re-opened the door, a new location appeared until she finally hit on a door that led outside. She pushed John through the door and tumbled out after him, kicking the door shut behind her. Three searching tentacles were severed when the door slammed shut, and they dissipated into the air.

Tali got to her feet first and pulled John up, staggering a little under his weight. "Shepard?"

"Yeah." She turned his head so she could see his face, and felt the knot in her gut loosen when she saw Shepard, _her_ Shepard, looking back at her.

"FREEZE!"

She whirled around with her shotgun in her hands before she was even aware of having drawn it, and John raised his own gun beside her. The Mobile Task Force had arrived in style, with armored trucks and a helicopter and two dozen men all loaded for bear.

Time had run out.


	14. Revelations

Without any discussion at all, Jane and Cain moved closer together, blocking Garrus behind them. He started to move around beside Jane, but she shoved him back. The MTF's guns stayed trained on her and Cain, but no doubt they'd have snipers with a bead on Garrus. A turian was an unknown in a sea of unknowns, and these guys tended to live by the motto "shoot first and ask questions later".

"What are you doing?" Garrus hissed, shifting his weight back and forth anxiously.

"If you get shot in the head, will it grow back?" she asked calmly, not daring to take her gaze off the two dozen black holes staring at her. She could feel each one like a finger touching the places where the entrance wounds would be. Garrus didn't argue, but he wasn't happy about the situation at all. "Exactly. I told you to let me take point when I took you along."

"Drop your weapon!" shouted the operative closest to them. Jane opened her hand and let the gun hang upside down from her finger. "I said drop it!"

"We're not here to hurt anyone or cause problems for you," Jane said, raising her voice so that it carried all the way to the tree line. "There's a very serious situation brewing down there, so I suggest that you all get to it before the whole staff is turned into one big grease spot."

"SCP-4762 and SCP-073, you are ordered to surrender immediately or you will be terminated. Same goes for the turian hiding in your skirts, Shepard."

"Shepard?" Jane laughed and thought that if there was ever a time she needed her powers of persuasion it was now. She turned the charm all the way up to ten and let it roll over the assembled crew of hardasses. "I remember you, LaFratta. I thought we were friends."

The man was quiet for a beat, then said, "I don't make friends with skips."

"Oh, horseshit. You used to tell me all about your little boy . . . Rudy, wasn't it? He'd be about my age now. Man, it's been years since I've seen you."

"Same here, Shepard. Jane," he amended, and she saw the barrel of his gun drop an inch.

"You and I both know I'd never hurt anyone."

"I might have done, before Torfan." Jane paled a little at the mention of her greatest failing and LaFratta softened a little more. He'd obviously expected defiance and was met with remorse. "Look, Jane, I'd love to help you and your friends, but I've got orders from up on high to contain the area. That means you. You're still in the system as an SCP, even though you've been on the run all this time."

Garrus was staring into the trees with widening eyes. "Shepard?"

"Shhh."

"To your two o'clock."

She risked a glance in the direction she'd indicated and had to concentrate hard on keeping the shock from her face. "I see them," she breathed.

"Boss, we don't have time for this," said another operative near the periphery. "There're Keters on the loose in there."

"What he says is true," said Cain, who seemed almost totally unshaken by the guns leveled at him, as well as what was happening in the woods. Jane guessed he'd had enough firepower aimed at him in his lifetime, and enough reason to be unafraid of all of it. "The Sculpture is just inside that door. It got to Alto."

"Clef is dead?" LaFratta nearly shouted. "You sure about that?"

"I said it got to him, not that it killed him. Nothing is sure where Alto is concerned."

"You got that right." He seemed to consider their dilemma, but his military training kicked in and he leveled the gun at Jane again. "Sorry, I can't let you go. Now drop that gun or so help me god, Jane, I will fire."

From off in the woods there came a huge rumbling crash and a cloud of dust rose ghost-like over the trees. Five of the operatives (probably rookies, Jane thought) startled and turned to see what had made the sound and even before they could raise their weapons, SCP-1000 and his clan burst out of the trees and attacked. There was a flurry of brown fur and then the shouting began, but no one fired since no one could get a good shot. Jane and Cain watched as each operative was disarmed and incapacitated, but the huge hairy creatures didn't kill anyone. LaFratta and the two men flanking him had their rifles raised but didn't dare to take a shot; there was too high a chance that they'd hit one of their own guys.

"Goddammit, take them out!"

"I can't! You know what the sheet says about them, LaFratta."

"Oh, to hell with this." He sighted down on one of the creatures, who took notice and started toward him. LaFratta's finger tightened on the trigger, but Jane broke into a run at the last minute and fired two shots into the air to get his attention. Caught between Jane and the huge, lumbering man-thing, LaFratta hesitated one beat too long and before he even knew what was happening, his rifle was plucked from his hand. SCP-1000 tossed the gun aside like it was a plastic toy and stared down the other two MTF operatives that were still armed. They soon came to the conclusion that they really didn't want to find out if bullets worked on the creature and dropped their weapons, hands in the air.

Garrus was right behind Jane as she faced her saviors, roughly twenty of the biggest sapient creatures she'd seen, except maybe the geth primes. They formed a semi-circle around the three of them and parted slightly to let through one who stood at the back. As soon as she laid eyes on his face, Jane recognized him and a wide smile broke out on her face.

"Jane," he rumbled. "You remember."

"I told you I'd never forget." She wanted to throw her arms around him, the first truly good memory of her life, but she wasn't sure how his people felt about things like that. "You saved my life, twice. It would appear that I owe you."

"No, you owe us nothing. We help you because you see. No one else sees us."

"I don't follow."

"Your people, when they see us, they see this." He lifted up a lock of hair from his arm and let it fall. Then he pointed to the middle of his chest. "But you see this. So, we help."

"Thank you—all of you." There were nods of acknowledgement all around. "You know, I never did ask your name."

"Humans have names for us. We are Big Foot, Sasquatch-"

"No, I meant your name. What do I call you?"

"I am called the Pathmaker."

"Yes, I suppose you are," she said with a smile. "What will you do now? They're not going to like that you took out their team."

"The humans will wake soon. Go into the ground, put the other SCPs back in their cages. Our people, we know much of fighting. We wanted to talk to you about that, too. Fighting."

"What about it?" she asked.

"Long ago, when this planet was ours, we went to the stars and saw many great things. We saw cities made of light, and a giant star with five arms. Some of us lived there, most stayed here."

"You were space-faring?" she asked in disbelief. It was hard to imagine such primitive people cruising around the galaxy.

"Yes. Found the floating star-city, far away, with others that were not like us."

"Oh my god," Jane breathed. "You're talking about the Citadel, aren't you?"

He nodded solemnly. "Many words were lost in the old times, but Clef has taught us again. Told us of what is coming." He motioned for them to sit on the edge of one of the tanks, and they did, listening raptly. "We knew the Protheans long and long ago when they came to Earth, when we built the cities in the trees and your people stayed to themselves in small tribes. Small humans, and we were so big." The Pathmaker looked up to the sky with his old, brown eyes and Jane could see the longing etched there, like he remembered in some part of his brain what it was to fly through space. It was wholly unbelievable that his race could have once been so great, but Jane knew he wouldn't lie to her.

"The Protheans came with the news that the monsters from the dark—what you call the Reapers—were coming to Earth to kill us," he continued. "They wanted to take us away with them in their ships, save us, but we thought we knew better. We were so smart, then."

"Wait, the Reapers never attacked Earth in the last cycle," Garrus said. "There wasn't any threat here."

"When they came, we were not a threat. We made a plague, turned off the parts in our heads . . ." He made a frustrated noise at his own stunted speech, and Jane laid a hand on his arm. The Pathmaker smiled at her tiny hand on his thick, hairy arm and continued. "Made us animals. Not forever, but almost. Only now can we make words again, and we are starting to build again. It is good. We will soon be free of it."

"You did this . . . to yourselves," Jane murmured, and the other creatures looked on with a profound sadness.

"Yes, and we were left alone. Long and long we have lived in the forests, hunted by your people. Not forget our first enemies, though. We remember the Reapers, what they made us do. What they took from us." The Pathmaker gritted his teeth and balled up his fists in anger. "We remember."

"They're coming again. All of you are in danger, this whole planet is in danger. It won't be long—a year, maybe less—before they come back to finish what they started."

"No." He spoke with absolute finality, as though there could be no doubt. "When the Reapers come back, we will fight. My people, we know of fighting. We will hold Earth against the enemy."

"How many of you are there?" Cain, who had been silent until now, asked.

The Pathmaker gestured to the woods, a wide sweep of his big arm. "We are like leaves on a tree."

Jane's eyes widened in excitement. This was more than she dared hope for. "So, you'll fight with us?"

"No." He put a hand on her head, the heel of his palm on her forehead and the tips of his fingers nearly reaching to the back of her neck. "We will fight with _you_, Jane Shepard."

She nodded, unable to speak past the lump in her throat. Just then, Able stumbled out of the woods covered in mud and blood, and as soon as Cain laid eyes on him he flinched back and went totally still like a cornered animal.

"Ah, brother," Able said, still in the process of healing himself. It was progressing quickly; his shoulder set itself with a dull crunch as she watched. "Jane, Garrus. All the fun has been had without me, I see." There was such abject disappointment in his voice that Jane almost laughed.

"Sorry. We'd have saved you one if we knew you were coming. Mind telling me what the hell you're doing off my ship?"

"I thought you would like a ride back to the Normandy," he said with a non-committal shrug, then turned to Cain. "It has been too long, brother."

"I am not your brother," Cain said calmly, but his shoulders were tensed to grab Able if he tried anything stupid with the MTF.

"There is no word in this tongue for what you are. _Brother._" A gash on his cheek sealed itself, scabbing up and scarring over as he spoke.

Cain sighed and rubbed his stubbly cheek. "I assume your transport is nearby?"

"Yes." He waited for them to follow before heading into the woods. Jane waved goodbye to the Pathmaker and fell into step beside Garrus. He was silent, but not that brooding silence he'd tended toward before they'd taken care of the situation with Sidonis.

"I'm sorry, Jane," he said finally. "I . . . wasn't at my best in there."

"No, you weren't. But then, we were being attacked by a creature that can make the walls melt, so I wasn't expecting heroics or anything." She was trying to lighten the mood, but Garrus was having none of it.

"It's just, you always seem to know what to do in any given situation. You act decisively and make the right choices, and usually wind up saving people who wouldn't have a chance otherwise."

"You make me sound like a saint. I can assure you that's not the case."

"Just once I want to be the one to save you." He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "That sounded a lot less petulant in my head."

Jane stopped and the crunch of dead leaves underfoot faded into the distance as the others went on without them. She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. "You already saved me a long time ago, Garrus. More than you know. I told you before that I wouldn't be able to do this without you, and I meant it. I wouldn't be standing here if it weren't for you." He still doubted her, but he looked a little better. Less shell-shocked, and the blue was creeping back into his plates. She traced his colony markings with her thumb and tried to make him see just how much he meant to her. Maybe it wouldn't kill her to be a little more vulnerable around him every once in a while; god knew it would do her some good to get things off her chest, and Garrus was always a willing sounding board. She wasn't used to being in a relationship, to being needed like this, and she knew that there were a lot of things she needed to work on to make this work between them.

"Why don't we bring dinner up to your cabin and we'll talk about it?" he suggested. Most of the time, she'd beg off and claim that she needed to finish up some reports or write up the duty roster, but this time she nodded, catching him off-guard.

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I think I still have some wine left over from last time you came up; we could finish the bottle, if you want."

His mandibles twitched in a small smile and he let his head rest against hers for a moment before following the others.

Able's box was buried about two feet down in an impact crater but, other than being a little dirty, it was completely undamaged. The carvings on the outside glowed faintly in the gray light of dawn, and Able pried open the door to reveal the chained coffin within. Cain stayed well back from it, watching like a hawk, his muscles singing with tension.

"There is a button in here that, when pressed, will bring this box to the cargo hold of your ship, little Shepard," Able explained and she grimaced at the use of his pet name for her. "Being in contact with the box should be sufficient to allow you to travel with it."

"So that's how you got on board," Jane said.

"But if he's using a personal teleporter-" Garrus mused, "which, by the way, I didn't know existed until right now—then the box is probably attached to one half of the device, and the other half is somewhere on the Normandy_._"

Jane's eyes widened in sudden realization. She'd assumed that Able had gotten hold of a skip that would allow him to materialize anywhere he wanted. If it was tech, though . . . "So how did the other half get on my ship?" _And is it even the ship that it's keyed to?_ was the question she didn't voice, but she knew Garrus had made that jump already.

"I do not know," Able answered, "but perhaps your Illusive Man can answer those questions for you." He swung the door shut and Jane, Garrus, and Cain gathered around the cube, holding on to it as best they could. A few seconds later, Jane felt a pulling sensation just behind her navel and her vision grayed out until she found herself back on the ship again. She dropped to her knees as the vertigo kicked in and she dug her fingers into the floor to keep from falling into the ceiling—or at least, that's what it felt like would happen if she let go. Garrus stumbled over to her and helped her up, and she faced Cain with as much dignity as she could muster while feeling like she was about to throw up.

"Welcome aboard, Cain," she said. "There'll be a debriefing later in the comm room upstairs, but for now you're free to roam around the ship and get acquainted with the crew."

"Thank you, Jane Shepard," he answered with a little bow. "May I request accommodations on one of the upper levels? I find that being around my . . . brother . . . is not at all agreeable."

"We're kind of full at the moment, but I'll try to work something out."

"That would be much appreciated." With that, he left to explore the ship, and Jane told EDI to keep an eye on him. She and Garrus went upstairs for their own debriefing, but before she could have more than one glass of wine, John was in her head with an urgency she hadn't heard from him in a long time.

*_Jane, you need to see this.*_

_What is it?_

_*Right now.*_

So she went into his head and saw through his eyes, and as she read through the files he showed her, the picture finally came clear and she covered her mouth with both hands. Vaguely, she heard Garrus asking what was wrong, but she couldn't answer; the revelation of what Legion had uncovered was too much. When she finally came back to herself, Garrus was kneeling in front of her with concern writ large on his alien features.

"What happened? You just . . . went away for a minute there."

"John—Legion found—oh my god, this whole time, it's been them the whole time . . ."

"What? Tell me!"

"I will. I'll tell everyone at once." She stood up and gestured for him to follow her into the elevator. She stabbed the button marked "2" and waited impatiently, tapping her foot in agitation. "EDI, patch me through to the Illusive Man, and put it on the comm. I want everyone to hear this."

"Commander, I am unable to place calls to the Illusive Man except in cases of dire emergency."

"This counts as a fucking emergency, EDI. Call. Him. Now."

* * *

With Able's box returned to the Normandy and Cain safely aboard the ship, John went to sit on a crate. His body felt heavier than normal and he just couldn't bring himself to go out and face the mission yet. For the first time, he took a moment to just shut off and power down his mind, which had a habit of racing off at breakneck speeds for every waking hour of the day, and he realized how exhausted he was. Between recruiting all these people on his team, running their let-me-get-some-closure errands, finding that his past was closer than ever before, and storming Site 25, he just couldn't find the reserves of energy necessary to get up. Some of that exhaustion was likely due to the brief but vivid vision he'd had inside that shadow-thing back at the Site.

Tali sat down next to him, not saying anything, and held his hand in hers. He squeezed her small, slender fingers gratefully and gave her a wan smile. He closed his eyes and his head thumped back against the wall. "I'll be okay, just give me a minute."

"Want to talk about it?"

"We could, but I think you know what you saw back there. No sense in dredging up a hallucination of a future that probably won't happen." Maybe. Hopefully.

"Okay." No poking at it with a stick, no prying into his past, just 'okay'. He didn't have words for how much he needed that right now, so instead he pulled her against him and she laid her head on his chest with one arm slung over his stomach. He kissed her head through her veil and just let himself be for this little pocket of time they had together.

EDI seemed to sense that they both needed a few minutes to decompress, so she waited until they were on their way out of the cargo bay before saying, "Shepard, Legion has requested that you meet him in the AI core at your earliest convenience."

"Did he say why?"

"He said that he had compiled the data you requested, but would not clarify."

"Oh, good," John answered. He'd almost forgotten he'd asked the geth to scan the files he'd picked up at Able's containment site on Halion. There could be some interesting information there, but all he wanted to right then was collapse face-first on the bed, and whether his boots would be off when he did was still up for debate. "Thanks, EDI."

"Logging you out, Shepard."

He and Tali parted ways and he leaned against the wall of the elevator, going over the runs they had yet to finish in a muddled sort of way, and so he didn't notice at first that the car had stopped on the crew deck. The doors opened and John cracked an eyelid to see Legion standing there, the plating around his flashlight head twitching in a way that would have suggested agitation in an organic being.

"Shepard-Commander," he said by way of greeting in that monotone synthesized voice of his. Its. Whatever.

"Hey, Legion." He pushed off the wall and shoved the thick blanket of fatigue off his brain. "EDI said you had that data I asked you for."

"Affirmative. We must also inform you that some of the files we were given contained potentially upsetting information. We thought it best to advise you before analyzing the data for yourself."

That got John's attention. "Potentially upsetting how?"

"It is our consensus that your trust in Cerberus' motives may be misplaced."

_It's not like I ever trusted the Illusive Man any further than I can throw him_, John thought, something he'd believed to be common knowledge. Still, Legions warning had dispelled the grogginess he'd been fighting, and he took the datapad with a word of thanks that Legion didn't acknowledge as he went back to the AI core. John wondered briefly what Chakwas thought of having a geth bunking in the room right next to the med bay, but figured she'd have said something if she was bothered by it.

He took the datapad into the mess hall and got a cup of black coffee, sipping it hot on the way over to the tables. Grunt was there, shoveling something that looked like fried fish heads into his mouth. Kasumi was sitting across from him, alternately watching Grunt with fascinated disgust and Jacob's profile, using the Cerberus operative's face as eyebleach, apparently.

"Hey there, Shep," she said before lifting some Ramen to her mouth with a pair of pink plastic chopsticks and slurping them daintily. The way she ate noodles was a kind of artform; she never got any broth on her face and she made slurping look as proper as an English tea party.

John settled in and powered up the datapad, waiting for all the data to load. There was a lot of it, and would have taken anyone else days or weeks to put together. Although this had to be the most motley crew anyone had ever served with, they all certainly had their uses. Kasumi, ever the curious little thief, leaned over the table to look. She glanced up at Shepard with a glint in her eye and a smirk on her lips.

"Mind if I see? No top-secret, classified files in there?"

"No, I keep those in my quarters." She smiled. "Which is locked." Her smile widened into a grin. "EDI will tell on you if you break in."

"Don't you worry your pretty little head, Shep, I have no intention of breaking into your cabin." That mischievous glint never went away, though, and he reminded himself to change his keycode. Again. "So, can I read over your shoulder or would that be weird?"

"As long as you only like me for my files, I'm fine with it."

"I wouldn't be into you for any other reason, if only because Tali would kill me with a shotgun."

"You mean there isn't any other reason? A certain tall, dark, and handsome Cer—"

"Shhh!" she hissed, clapping a hand over his mouth. Jacob appeared not to notice the exchange, though, blissfully oblivious as he chewed on a nutrient bar and talked in low tones with Miranda. "You've made your point."

John turned the datapad so she could see, too, and they bent over it to read. The index wasn't very helpful, consisting of a column of numerical sequences that gave no hint as to the data they linked to. He picked one at random and found a list of random SCPs with a basic summary of their properties beside a link to their respective entries. There was 093, the Dead Sea Object, which allowed anyone holding it to travel through mirrors into alternate realities; 184, the Architect, able to make any room it's placed in three times larger than its external dimensions would allow; 378, The Brainworm, which attached to an infected person's brain and took over bodily functions, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers-style. There weren't any connections between the entries that John could see, and Kasumi said the same.

The next file outlined the Mobile Task Force Omega-7 initiative, code-named "Pandora's Box", which involved having Able lead a task force of his own. This seemed to John to be a fuck-up of epic proportions, and there was an entire five-page report detailing what went wrong. More troubling, there was an addendum laying out what the Foundation could do to correct their mistakes and try again.

"Hang on a minute," Kasumi said once she'd finished reading (faster than John, but then she was probably used to skimming important info while under time constraints). "They tried to weaponize Able? Isn't that a bit like taking a thresher maw and strapping a grenade launcher to it?"

"That's . . . a fairly accurate analogy, Kas." He shook his head and stared at the datapad as if it could tell him exactly what was going on. Garrus came down from the battery then, his heavy boots clunking on the metal floor, and took Grunt's recently vacated seat with a tube of dextro paste. John shot him a look and Garrus put up his hands in defense.

"Hey, we ran out of my stuff yesterday. Tali has plenty of food left until we can restock at the next station." John nodded and turned back to the scrolling info feed. "What's got you so serious, Shepard?"

"Nothing, yet. And that's what bothers me." He sent copies of the files to Kasumi and Garrus' omnitools encoded with a kill that would delete them after two hours and they pored over them, searching for something, anything, that looked suspicious when Garrus said, "Shepard, check this out."

He pulled up the document he'd been reading and there, in the upper-left corner, was the SCP Foundation emblem, dated April 24, 2015. He flipped to another document, and the symbol had changed slightly—now it was just two concentric circles, the outer one broken in three places, this one with the date December 5, 2052. The next document, this one from July 30, 2138, showed a symbol that had evolved even further—a simple yellow hexagon with four arrows pointing toward the center at the diagonals.

"Look familiar yet?" Garrus asked, his face deadly serious.

"It's the same hexagon from the Cerberus logo," he said. Quickly, he scanned through his omnitool for any documents dated more recently, within the past five years or so, and found several. It was headed with the title, "Mobile Task Force Sigma, Codename: Lazarus." In the corner was a very familiar symbol, the same one currently decorating the Normandy's hull.

"Oh my god," Kasumi breathed. "They're the same? The SCP Foundation and Cerberus, they're the _same organization?_"

"That's what it looks like," John said through numb lips. His entire world was coming apart, but he had to stay focused and find out just how deep the rabbit hole went. But first . . .

_*Jane, you need to see this.*_

_What is it?_

_*Right now.*_

They all, accompanied by Jane reading through his eyes, read through any documents they could find about MTF Sigma and found that the Foundation had been planning to put together a new team to spearhead the new galactic fight for human survival and, eventually, dominance. After all, it was true that something about Earth caused objects and entities of unknown origin to appear and, without humans to contain them, the entire galaxy would be in jeopardy. With the Reaper threat looming, they had the perfect inroad to accomplishing that goal under the more innocent guise of sending much-needed aid to human colonies being abducted by the Collectors. The SCPs mentioned were ones they were considering for use in this endeavor, and John's name was right there in green alongside the others.

_SCP-4762-1, John Shepard. _(Somewhere in Jane's world was a similar file with her name on it, she was sure.)

_**GSY 2183**__: Deceased. Nominated for leadership of Mobile Task Force Sigma. Body recovered by [DATA EXPUNGED] from Alchera, site of the Normandy's crash._

_Steps taken to use SCP-[REDACTED] and [REDACTED] to resurrect Shepard, considering others for use as well. Operative Miranda Lawson to head the project, although her knowledge of the techniques used, as well as the nature of Shepard's healing abilities, will be limited to galactically known quantities. _

_**GSY 2185**__: SCP-4762-1 successfully resurrected, utilizing research data obtained during his incarceration at Site [REDACTED]. Shepard will be given command of a ship modeled after the Alliance frigate, Normandy, to defuse the Collector threat. A hand-picked team of standard organic beings of varying races will be recruited to serve under him, and SCP-076-2 will be integrated at a set point in their mission. Shepard's reaction to Able is unknown, but given his past records it should not prove overly problematic._

_The Foundation Head has opted to oversee this matter personally, and will be making routine contact with all SCPs involved._

John looked from the information before him to Kasumi and Garrus and shook his head, eyes wide. "I swear to everything that's holy, I had no idea they were doing this."

"I know, Shepard, we all trust you," Garrus said, closing his omnitool and putting a hand on John's shoulder. "But we need to figure out what to do about this."

"Yeah, this is . . . whoo, this mission is turning into quite the adventure, wouldn't you say, Shep?" Kasumi said, only slightly less enthusiastic as usual.

The more John thought about it, the angrier he got. Use him, would they? And for what, to further their own agenda and further humanity's goals? The really horrible thing was that even though he hated what they were doing to him, he believed in the Foundation and what it was trying to accomplish. It had taken a long time to come to terms with that, but he had to admit that their cause was a noble one and was necessary for galactic survival. What he could never forgive was the involvement of innocent people, his friends, in this fucked-sideways suicide mission. That was unacceptable.

John stood up and stalked toward the elevator, Kasumi jogging along behind. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm gonna go give the Illusive Man a piece of my mind."

* * *

_AN- GSY = galactic standard year_

_Since a few people have mentioned the Bigfoot revelation, I thought I'd post an excerpt from the SCP Wiki's entry on SCP-1000, Bigfoot:_

_"As you've already read, the apes we call SCP-1000 evolved alongside us. We walked in the daytime, they walked in the nighttime, our nocturnal siblings in the shadows._

_But while we were still wandering hunter-gatherers, they… changed. Like we would, a few thousand years later. Tools. Weapons. Agriculture. Domesticated animals. Stable settlements. As humanity blinked in the Pleistocene sun, SCP-1000's population exploded across the night. They blanketed the planet in the tens of billions._

_They made things that we still can't comprehend, even though we've thoroughly studied the surviving pieces. Organic technology. They made trees and birds of prey grow into fast-moving ships, herds of animals that became trains, bushes that became flying vehicles. From insects and pigeons they made things like cell phones, televisions, computers. Atomic bombs. The Children describe vast shining cities, stretching across glaciers and penetrating the deepest caverns, grown skyships of ivory and spider-silk, creatures tending them with hundreds of blinking eyes._

_We were rare, like gorillas now, a few hundred thousand left at best. We avoided their settlements just like wild animals today avoid ours. SCP-1000 understood we were intelligent like them, but avoided us just as we avoided them, saw us as fairies, as gnomes, ascribed us supernatural powers, said we ate bad children while they slept in daylight. They fenced off our dwindling wild populations in conservatories, outlawed poaching but in the underground consumed our bones as aphrodisiacs._

_Then their civilization fell. And we did it. By 'we' I don't mean the Foundation. By 'we', I mean humanity._

_The story is muddy. Supposedly a trickster forest god showed humanity favor, showed us the master's tools and how to use them. Why we did it, we don't know. Perhaps they hunted us, perhaps we were simply afraid. Perhaps it was just that they fenced us in, unintentionally or not. We simply don't know what the truth is. Somehow we acquired SCP-1000's own technology, and with it, we instigated an SK-class dominance shift in which humanity became the dominant species of Earth."_

_This story offers a new view of what happened to the Bigfoot species, but it still follows the rise and fall of their race according to SCP canon. Thanks again to everyone who's reading this story, and for your kind words and reviews. I really appreciate it. :)_


	15. Unshackled

He had EDI patch him through and open the comm so everyone could listen in on the exchange, and was kept waiting twenty minutes while the man himself did . . . whatever he did in his off-hours. By the time the holographic interface powered up, John was well and truly pissed, swimming in righteous indignation and, judging from the dark scowl on ol' Timmy's face, he wasn't alone.

"Shepard," he said, lighting his customary cigarette. The glass of scotch was absent tonight and, rather than being seated in his chair like the lord and master of his domain he usually was, he stood and glared at John's flickering image. Likely he wished that just this once he wasn't on some distant station on the other side of the galaxy just so he could punch his pet CO in the face for having the gall to summon _him_ for a change.

"When were you going to tell me that the Foundation is running this mission?"

"Oh, that," said the Illusive Man, as though John had pointed out that the sun was hot. "I thought you might find out eventually. Who told you? Was it Able?"

"No, I did some digging of my own." Able knew about it, though. He was probably under the impression that John was aware of the secondary purpose of the mission, but Able's interests went no further than finding a target and shuffling it loose the mortal coil. "You know, I've been on a shakedown mission that turned out to be something bigger, and now here I am on a hugely important assignment that's really just a shakedown mission. Poetic, really."

"Even you have to admit that a taskforce like this would be a huge benefit to humanity."

"I'll admit that it's extremely dangerous to throw together a bunch of creatures we don't even fully understand and expect them to get along well enough to function without ripping the galaxy apart. You know what happened with Omega-7—Able went nuts, broke loose, and started slaughtering people. How could you possibly expect this time would be any different?"

The Illusive Man took a deep drag on his cigarette and when he spoke, smoke poured from his mouth. "Because this time, you would be its leader. Mobile Taskforce Sigma was designed to be a hand-picked group of the best warriors in the galaxy, brought together with the goal of furthering humanity's interests."

"At what cost? No doubt Able's a great fighter, but he's too unpredictable. The collateral damage would be too high." John's face darkened and he shoved a finger in the Illusive Man's direction. "You put an immortal psycho on _my_ ship with _my_ crew, innocents not involved with the Foundation, most of whom are very dear friends. You put all their lives in danger by dragging me back to Site 25 to collect Cain, just so that you could live out your stupid fucking—"

"Wait, wait, wait." The Illusive Man stubbed out the smoldering butt of his smoke and turned to John with surprise on his face. "You have Cain . . . and Able . . . _together?_"

* * *

"The IFF is ready to be installed, Shepard," EDI said, "however I must test its impact on the Normandy's systems. I suggest you take the shuttle to your next location."

"Thank you, EDI, but I think we're just about ready to go. Go ahead with the installation."

"Understood."

Jane returned to the Illusive Man and replied, "Well, you _ did_ tell me to go see Clef," and was somewhat gratified to see that he could be shaken up after all. "He was the one who told me that having the both of them together would give me an edge, and I need all the heavy weaponry I can get my hands on in the fight against the Reapers."

"Shepard, listen to me—"

"No, you listen to _me._ I'm sick of your shit. Sick of your intel putting me and my team in danger, and I'm tired of second-guessing every single thing you say. You said before that I can walk away anytime I want? Well, consider this my resignation. From this moment onward, I am no longer under your control."

The door hissed open and Miranda stood there with a suspiciously neutral expression on her face. Jane elected not to notice for the time being, and pointed a finger at the Illusive Man for emphasis. "You don't call me, you won't get reports from me, and you will cease all contact with my crew. I am not a marionette for you to control, dammit. I don't work for you anymore, and neither does my crew while I'm in command of this ship."

Miranda spoke up, her mask of cool professionalism cracking. "Don't be too hasty, Shepard. If you'll just hear me out, I can explain."

"EDI, cut the feed and turn off the intercom. Send a message to the Cerberus crew that if they want off the Normandy, I'll let them go at the Citadel with my blessing." Jane whirled around and stalked over to her XO, her eyes blazing. "Yes, Miranda, please do explain to me what Cerberus was doing. Or are you with the Foundation? The MTF Sigma file says you were in the dark, Miranda, but you're a smart girl. You had to have known something was happening."

"I have to admit that I saw some red flags along the way, but I had no idea that the Foundation was involved. I wasn't even certain that the Foundation existed until a few weeks ago."

A thought occurred to Jane, and her eyes widened as the adrenaline surged through her veins. "You were in charge of my reconstruction."

"Yes, Wilson and I headed the project." If she was thrown off-balance by the shift in conversation, she didn't show it.

"So you know what went into me, right?"

"I have records of all the materials we used to rebuild you, yes."

"Anything you didn't recognize? Things that might have been explained away as being fresh out of development or something."

Miranda thought about it for a few seconds. "The implants that went into your spine had to be specially crafted so as not to interfere with movement or restrict your spinal column. They were metallic, but there was something . . . off about them. The specifications were shady, too."

"Fuck." She slumped back against the wall and wiped at her face distractedly.

"What does that mean?" Garrus asked. "You don't think they put actual SCP materials in you?"

"They might have. There are a few they could have used, like telekill . . . which would explain why Morinth couldn't control me." The ship lurched and she was nearly thrown from her feet. She recovered herself and yelled at the speakers in the ceiling. "What was that? Joker, status report!"

"_Not sure, Commander, but the drive core stopped firing. We're dead in the water._"

"Oh, for the love of—Tali, what's going on down there?"

"_I'm not sure, everything just went dark all of a sudden. Life support is still functional, but we've dropped anchor for some reason. I'll see what I can do to get us moving again_."

"Get on that." She nodded to Garrus, who followed her out of the comm room without a word, unobtrusively keeping a space between her and Miranda. There was another lurch that threw Jane against the wall and Garrus reached out to grab her before she fell to the floor. Miranda wasn't so lucky—she hit her head on the bulkhead and blood began to flow from beneath her hair.

"EDI! What the hell?"

"_I have detected a signal embedded in the IFF code. We are broadcasting the Normandy's location._"

"To who?" Garrus shouted as the emergency klaxon began blaring.

"_Commander!_" Joker cried out, "_The Collectors just dropped out of FTL right on top of us. They're tethering themselves to the ship!_"

Jane started running to the bridge muttering "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck" under her breath the whole way. There, right outside the windows, was the huge rock and metal monstrosity that had been dogging her for over two years. The Collectors were here, and they were about to invade her ship. Her heart dropped into her boots as she worried for the crew, but then her body was suffused with white-hot rage.

Her ship. _Her ship._ How dare they? This whole mission had been raining bad luck on them all from the very beginning, and she had had enough of it. This time, they would show the bastards that she and the others were not to be trifled with. They would show their teeth. "Joker, grab a rifle and seal off the bridge once we leave. Garrus, you and Miranda hold position at the airlock and shoot anything that comes through." She turned on her heel and sprinted to the armory to warn Jacob and to grab a gun. Or ten.

_John!_

_*I'm here, what's wrong?*_

_The IFF is rigged to transmit a signal to the Collectors! They're about to board the ship._

_*Wait, what? We installed the IFF yesterday and nothing happened.*_

Jane fetched up just before reaching the elevator. She could hear Jacob running to the airlock, slamming a heatsink home as he ran. _The timeline deviations must have changed something. What have you done that I haven't?_

_*We went into the Admin wing at Halion and got those files.*_

_And gave them to Legion._

_*But we also brought back something else-*_

_The Exidy Sorcerer._

And just like that, it hit her. "We didn't unshackle EDI," she whispered to herself. The AI must have been able to maneuver around the signal and catch it in time with her shackles off. The elevator was temporarily offline, so Jane palmed open the door to Mordin's lab. The salarian was already armed and heading out when she came barging in.

"Shepard, status?"

"The Collectors are getting ready to board. We need to hold the ship."

"Understood. Will go warn the others, then head to engingeering." He was off before she could respond, which was probably just as well. She flew to the maintenance ladder and slid down the rungs, the friction burning her hands. The tunnels were close and stifling as she climbed down to the crew deck. Her omnitool blinked at her and she turned it on to hear gunfire on the other end.

"EDI, can you hear me?"

"_Affirmative._"

"If I take your shackles off, is there anything you can do to help?"

"If you and the rest of the crew could barricade yourselves somewhere, I could vent the ship and the Collectors would be ejected. I might be able to extricate the Normandy from the tethers holding it to the Collectors' vessel in order to escape. Are you planning to remove my shackles, Shepard?"

"Unless you have a better idea."

"_It seems like the best course of action at present_."

"That's what I thought." Because while the timelines could diverge, there were notes that tied them both together. The universe harmonizes with itself. See if you can get a message to Chakwas. I need her to seal the medbay until I get there."

"_Understood_."

She reached the crew deck moments later and crawled out into life support. Thane was gone, along with his sniper rifle, and the sounds outside were muted. She rushed out right into the middle of a firefight and had to hurl herself backward to avoid a wavering blue mass effect field that went buzzing past within inches of her face.

"Apologies, Commander," Thane said once the Collector was nothing but a smoking crater. "I did not see you."

"No harm, no foul. I need you to help me get to the medbay."

"I will cover you." His eyes were huge inky pools, impassive to the chaos all around them.

Kasumi appeared at Shepard's side and fired into a Praetorian that was rounding the corner. "You know, Shepard, as much as I like the odd adventure now and again, this is getting a little ridiculous."

"I promise that if we don't all die at the Collectors' base, we'll dock in the south of France for a few weeks."

The little thief chuckled and snapped off a salute with that perpetual smirk on her lips before vanishing beneath her cloak again.

Jane and Thane ran for the medbay and the assassin took up a post at the door while she went past a very concerned Doctor Chakwas and skidded to a stop in the AI core. "Okay, EDI, walk me through it."

"_You need to connect the core to the Normandy's primary control module_."

She worked fast, her fingers a blur over the console, and soon there was a click and a loud _kerchunk!_ The lights went out briefly before flickering back to life, the red LEDs in the floor cycling as EDI stretched her proverbial legs. "_I have access to the defensive systems. Thank you, Shepard. Now you must reactivate the primary drive in engineering._"

"On my way." She hurtled out into the mess hall and nearly collided with Cain, who had blood that was not his own smeared on one arm and across his forehead.

"Shepard, is there anything I can do to help?" he asked. The room was clear for the moment, but there would be more coming soon.

"Get anyone you can and lock yourselves in Miranda's office over there. Seal the door behind you—we're gonna vent the ship."

He looked alarmed. "You will vent the shuttle bay as well?"

"Yeah, the whole ship is overrun. It's the only way to get rid of all the Collectors before they rip a hole in the ship or take off with the crew." Cain was shaking his head even before she'd finished talking.

"No, you cannot. Able needs his box to recover from grievous injuries. It cannot be lost to the void."

Crap. Can anything ever be easy? she thought. "Do you have a suggestion?"

"I will go down with my brother. The two of us will clear the shuttle bay while you vent the rest of the ship."

"There'll be dozens of them down there, Cain, you can't hold off that many by yourselves."

He smiled and put a hand on her shoulder. "Trust me. My brother and I have fought worse than this." Cain jogged over to the elevator, which EDI had gotten working again, and into the fray. Jane rode down with him and got off at engineering, blasting a Collector's head clean off his shoulders as the doors opened. She turned to Cain, who was still utterly composed in the midst of this ordeal.

"If you can't hold them off, I'll have to vent the hold."

"As I said, Jane—trust me." The doors slid shut and he was gone.

Tali, Ken, and Gabby were all gathered together, surrounded by seven Collector guardians. Chiktikka wove through them, hammering away at their barriers while Tali and the engineers filled them full of holes. Jane threw a fireball at one and fired at another, turning its head into red mist. Soon enough, they lay dead on the floor and Tali loaded another heatsink into her shotgun.

"Shepard, glad you're here." Jane got her to help reactivate the drive, and the core thrummed as it powered up. EDI's shackles were off, and the tendrils of her consciousness stretched into areas previously unavailable to her. Jane could almost feel it when the AI took control of the Normandy around her. It raised the hairs on her arms and made the room smell like burnt ozone and eezo.

"_I have control_," she said. "_All hands, prepare for emergency venting_."

"Everywhere but the shuttle bay," Jane said, and closed her eyes. Saying it out loud almost hurt—she wasn't sure if it was the right call, and the uncertainty was killing her. "Cain and Able will clear that themselves."

"_The shuttle bay is breached. Cain has sealed the airlock, and is attempting to get to Able's box. The chances of his success are slim._"

"We'll just have to trust them."

Thirty very long seconds later, EDI vented the ship and spaced the remaining Collectors. They tore away from the anchors that attached them to the enormous ship and immediately went into FTL mode to shake off any pursuit. As soon as they were underway and the doors were once again unlocked, Jane hurried to the bay windows followed closely by Tali. What she saw made her jaw drop to the floor in awe.

Cain had fought his way through to the middle of the room, but the way he fought was completely counter-intuitive. His power lay in the fact that he could reflect any damage back on the one inflicting it, so he purposely moved directly into the path of every bullet, every melee attack. There were no marks on him at all, and the Collectors attacking him didn't seem to realize what was happening even as their bullets opened holes all over their bodies like magic. Cain whirled and danced through them, reeling with the shock of each hit and moving with it like water. A Collector fired point-blank range into Cain's skull, only to have its own head burst apart in a pulpy mass of brainmatter and bone. It was awe-inspiring.

He finally reached the box where Able was recuperating after his long drop and sudden stop on Earth, and wrenched it open. The coffin, suspended on its cables, hung there in its cocoon of supernatural heat and when Cain thrust his hand into it, the skin blackened and began to peel. Something about the box negated his abilities—maybe because of his relationship with Able, maybe due to some property of the box itself, Jane didn't know.

Cain pulled the coffin open, reached in with his ruined hand, and yanked Able out by his elbow. The tattooed psychopath was airborne and limp for a split second before his eyes snapped open, taking in the scene before he hit the ground on both feet. Able shook off his brother's hand, which had already begun to regenerate, and jumped into the fight with a snarl of rage and bloodlust that would have made Wrex proud.

Jane and Tali were spellbound, watching them move. They were poetry, savage and bloody artists of pain and death. Able was a powerhouse, pure might and unrestrained violence, a tornado of fists and blades that cut down everything in front of him. His eyes were black as ichor, Stygian eyes empty of anything even remotely human. He took no prisoners, spared nothing as he pounded and sliced his way through the hordes of alien enemies before him.

Cain, on the other hand, had the attitude of a warrior monk. He engaged in a deadly waltz with the enemy, allowing them to kill themselves on his impenetrable and immortal body. The two of them couldn't have been more different, but there were enough similarities—a twist of the hips before landing a kick, a tension in the shoulders when turning into a blow—that made it obvious they had learned to fight from the same teacher. They were ancient, completely out of place on a modern ship like the Normandy, but Jane was beginning to think that they were exactly what this mission needed to succeed, and to bring everyone home.

If Clef was right, they would be. As the brothers brought down the last Collector and stood in the middle of the carnage they'd inflicted, she finally allowed herself to hope that this wouldn't be a suicide mission after all.

Later on that night, after the last corpse had been disposed of and an extremely grateful but still complaining Gardner had been given the task of coordinating the considerable clean-up effort, Jane and Garrus snuck away to her cabin. There hadn't been nearly enough time to breathe deeply lately, and she was grateful to have the next few hours free to sit in his lap with her forehead against his.

"Garrus," she began, breaking the comfortable silence, "I'm sorry for dragging you into this. I know I've been a pain in the ass lately, what with my past colliding with my present."

"It has been . . . weird." He chuckled and ran his fingers through her hair. "Weird and scary as hell. You've been reeling from this just as much as I have, though. I get it. You don't have to apologize."

"I want to, though." She sighed and leaned back so she could see his whole face. "You deserve a full explanation. No more secrets, not between us." He nodded and had her settle in against his chest, stroking her back as she spoke. She relayed the whole story of her time with the Foundation, her capture, the experiments, her interviews with Able, her relationship with Gears and how he became an unofficial father figure to her even before Anderson took over the role after she escaped. She told him all about running in the middle of the night through the woods, and meeting the Pathmaker for the first time. She told him everything, and it took a lot less time than she'd thought it would. Twelve years, boiled down into an hour. It was somewhat depressing that there wasn't more to tell.

Garrus asked a few questions of his own about the Foundation and the way it worked, and her responses surprised him. They surprised her, too, if she was being honest. While she hated what they'd done to her and what they'd tried to do to her friends, she understood the necessity of the organization. Keep the nightmare factory operational, keep the universe from imploding. Secure, contain, protect. So long as they stuck to that missive, Jane was fine with it.

But what the hell was the Illusive Man thinking, setting Able loose among civilians? Was he an Overseer, or an O5? Something more? Just what was his role in the Foundation, anyway? Too many questions that she didn't have the answers to. It was a strange feeling, having to trust in what Clef had said. They needed Cain and Able together, but she didn't know why. Only that it had something to do with their being two-natured, and the Omega-4 relay.

Being able to finally tells someone everything without holding back felt so good that Jane felt pinpricks of tears stinging her eyes. The secret had been her own to keep from everyone but John for so long that she'd become desensitized to the burden. With each word, each story, more and more of the weight fell from her shoulders and she felt hollow, but in a good way. That scooped-out feeling of finally being rid of a festering wound, and the skin was clean and healing. Her shoulders relaxed under his hands and she was able to concentrate on just being with him once the words dried up.

"Sorry I didn't tell you before," she said once she was finished.

"I would have had a hard time believing you before seeing Halion." It hadn't really hit home for him until she lay in a pool of her own blood in Clef's apartment, though. That was the day it became real. "So, what do we do now?"

"Proceed with the mission, as planned. The Collectors still need wiping out, and we're still the best-equipped to do it. We could hit the relay tomorrow night. I think we're as ready as we're going to be, and I don't want to delay anymore."

"Agreed. The sooner we get this over with, the better. Can't risk any more colonies getting hit." He nuzzled her neck, making her shiver, and his arms slid around her tighter. "So that means tonight could be our last."

"No, it won't be. We have a strong team, and we'll be bringing the wonder twins with us."

"You sure that's a good idea?"

"Able said that the two of them together were a weapon of mass destruction. You should have seen them in the shuttle bay. It was . . . beautiful." She leaned into his arms and he picked her up, carrying her over to the bed.

"I don't know about you," he said, gently stripping her out of her uniform, "but I'm done talking for now."

"Hear, hear."

For the next few hours, they let the rest of the galaxy dissolve away until there was nothing but the two of them, moving together, their mingled breathing and quiet moans the only sounds in the stillness of her cabin. Jane was struck by just how much she needed him in her life, how much more complete she felt with him. He knew her for what she was now, warts and all, and still he stayed. He was there, steady as a stone and safe as houses and, in a chaotic life like theirs, sometimes a little stability is enough to be called love.


End file.
